tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424364424049242300.post7263229701820253195..comments2023-06-21T18:53:11.897+10:00Comments on Pykk: then lost patience and swore at her, disgustedUmbagollahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14556344092820711893noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424364424049242300.post-75261280299618867332010-07-11T10:01:01.672+10:002010-07-11T10:01:01.672+10:00I think it came down to this: it was a crack in he...I think it came down to this: it was a crack in her authorial presence, the author let me think that she was ignorant (either she didn't see the difference between life and fiction, or she saw it and didn't think it was worth explaining), and after that I saw ignorance everywhere.Umbagollahhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14556344092820711893noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424364424049242300.post-10436389347260383942010-07-11T07:29:27.684+10:002010-07-11T07:29:27.684+10:00This comment has been removed by the author.Umbagollahhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14556344092820711893noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424364424049242300.post-1469997951663032382010-07-11T07:29:11.729+10:002010-07-11T07:29:11.729+10:00I get your gist, and yes. She writes as if Baynton...I get your gist, and yes. She writes as if Baynton simply hauled her life out of her memory, thumped it down on the page, and added a climax. But the stories are <i>shaped</i> -- that's obvious when you read them. Everything in <i>Chosen Vessel</i> is there to emphasise the wife's isolation and legitimise her fear. The husband laughing in his wife's face is part of that shaping. There's no reason to believe that Alex Frater laughed too. How many villains have laughed cruelly in the heroine's white face? Dozens. Hundreds. How often must she have read scenes like that in novels? The early parts of Baynton's life in this biography are a combination of extrapolation from the fiction and details from interviews (in the paragraph after the cow scene, we hear that Alex Frater liked to spend his time at home sitting and smoking on the verandah, and this is endnoted to a conversation with someone called Ken Frater) but in the text there's no acknowledgement of the difference. I kept one of my thumbs jammed in at the back of the book because I was flipping to and fro so often. Every time I came to something new, I wanted to know whether I was reading a corroborated fact, or something the biographer had just made up because it felt nice. <br /><br />It's one thing to say, "The character lives an isolated life in the bush, as we know Barbara did, and so, reading the story, we might assume that Barbara felt lonely and terrified, as the character does," and another thing to artificially insert the thoughts of a fictional character into a real person's head, to say, "she wondered if he too would run if she tried the same on him," because the character wonders it. In the case of the son and <i>Drought Driven</i> H-J not only gives the fictional character's behaviour to the real-life son, she invents a real-life psychological reason for it. In the story, son, mother, and baby are in danger, and the son's precociousness is there is underline the mother's helplessness -- see (says the author silently): her only male protector is this little kid, who has no idea how much danger they're in, and who chatters about snakes, and how he's going to rescue her from these imaginary snakes by stamping on them with his little kiddie shoes -- the author describes the smallness of the shoes, and the reader understands how useless this protection is. His precociousness is an inadequate mimickry of the assistance she needs. <i>It has a role in the story.</i> But H-J takes it at face value, and tells us, "Alex was away most of the time and the elder boy, with no regular father figure, became more precociously manly and protective of his mother." This appears to be utterly, completely, absolutely, the biographer's invention.Umbagollahhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14556344092820711893noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424364424049242300.post-54919242522423844992010-07-10T17:04:19.557+10:002010-07-10T17:04:19.557+10:00Oh, you make me laugh: "she goes at her subje...Oh, you make me laugh: "she goes at her subject's life like a handyman with a tub of polyfilla". Great stuff, but not exactly encouraging me to read the book! I think I'd read you instead! It is always a worry when people draw conclusions about a writer's life from their writings, even when they have written from their experience. Unless the writer has specifically told you that this really was so - and even then do you always believe what a writer says? - you never know whether they are exploring different options/ways of acting/being rather than recording verbatim their actual experience/feelings. What an ugly sentence that is but you get my gist I'm sure...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424364424049242300.post-70030142998960078492010-07-09T11:39:23.033+10:002010-07-09T11:39:23.033+10:00Barbara Baynton: Between Two Worlds, published by ...<i>Barbara Baynton: Between Two Worlds</i>, published by Penguin in 1989. It looks as if Hackforth-Jones is related to Baynton through her uncle, who was married to Baynton's daughter, although I'm guessing that the daughter must have died before the biographer had a chance to interview her, because she thanks "my uncle H.B. Gullett for his knowledge of Barbara and the time" but not "my aunt Penelope."Umbagollahhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14556344092820711893noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424364424049242300.post-31499032197216730442010-07-08T21:17:03.607+10:002010-07-08T21:17:03.607+10:00What's the name of the book, Deane? A bio of B...What's the name of the book, Deane? A bio of Baynton, I guess?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com