One of the items on my list of things to do for many years has been to visit Castlecrag, residential area of Sydney in the leafy North Shore (a term that means a lot here and nothing anywhere else). What is the allure of Castlecrag? The original subdivision was planned and some of the houses designed built by Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony. After they completed with their commission in designing and starting the lay out of Canberra, they spent time in both Melbourne and Sydney to practice their profession: architecture.
In Sydney they were commissioned to develop Castlecrag. The local historical association provides a map for the Griffith-Mahony work;
http://www.castlecrag.org.au/history/history.htm
I could not find a copy of Wanda Spathopoulos, The Crag – Castlecrag 1924-1936. Blackheath: Schlesigner, 2007.
William Morris in his novel News from Nowhere (1890) called for a reintegration of man with nature as the Industrial Revolution hummed along. For this work he has been accorded a place in the pantheon of Utopian thinkers. I have included it on syllabi more than once. Morris had some faint influence on Frank Lloyd Wright, if anyone can be said to have influenced that man of granite, and Wright was the mentor of Griffin and Mahony. The line of influence most probably ran through the Garden City movement of Ebenezer Howard, see his Garden Cities of Tomorrow.
News from Nowhere was serialized first and over time Morris re-worked before it finally appeared as a book. It was in good part a reaction to the mechanistic and materialistic image of the future offered by Edward Bellamy in Looking Backward (1887). Howard was aware of Morris’s book and published his own first edition shortly after News from Nowhere.
Moreover, the idea of a planned city build on a greenfield is a motif in utopian thinking about the New Jerusalem with a clean start, i.e., Canberra in this case.
So we decided to do it one rainy Friday. The rain was persistent but light and we have long since decided not to let the elements dictate to us in any but the more exceptional cases.
We saw an image of Griffin but not Mahony
We saw a number of unmistakeable houses integrated into the escarpment. Often overlooked by McMansions of more recent vintage.
Footnote on William Morris. I tried to read a biography of him but gave up reading the record of his endless petulant tantrums — precious, indeed! For a Green avant le mot he did good business. His designs founded the Morris Company which operated from 1875-1940 as Morris & Co. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_%26_Co.
One of the most loyal customers of Morris & Co. was the Carrick Family of South Australia. With the result that the South Australia Art Gallery and Museum have many items form Morris & Co., including some clothing. In addition, Carrick Hill offers many more Morris & Co. items in situ. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrick_Hill
When in Adelaide it is well worth a visit.
Author: Michael W Jackson
The Necktie and the Human Condition: My Story
Class, today’s topic is: The world is divided into two kinds of people: those who wear neckties and those who comment on those who wear neckties. Discuss.
(Once I thought that the world divided into (1) those who divided the world into two kinds of people and (2) those who thought it was more complicated than that. I have since changed my mind. Keep reading to find out why.)
Pursuing the vita scholastica these years toiling in classrooms to persuade students to do the assignments, placating the lords of research grants, and dealing with that alien species which edits academic journals, I wear a necktie to the office most days. Well every weekday and some weekend days at the office, too…….
To read more, cut-and-paste this address into a browser address bar.
http://www.themontrealreview.com/2009/The-Necktie-and-the-Human-Condition.php
Once again the tools for hyperlinking, bolding, and so on are not available.
The Long March (1952) by William Styron
William Styron, The Long March (1952). Recommended for adults.
Styron (1925-2006) is an acclaimed writer whose work I have largely missed. I read his Lie Down in Darkness (1951) as student and probably missed most of it though I can have been only a few years younger than he was when he published it at the age of 24. His two most famous novels are Sophie’s Choice (1979) and The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967).
I recently read The Long March. In one word: Powerful. To say, accurately, that it is an account of an U. S. Army Reserve training exercise says everything and nothing. It is about an exercise that tests the men involved against each other in a contest of wills, while simultaneously testing them each individually in a battle within himself to keep going on the long march.
It is training and those who drop out get a ride back to base. There is no enemy trying to kill them. Yet it is arduous and soul-destroying to keep moving.
The prose is windowpane clear. The author does not intrude into the action with poetic flourishes or clever comparisons. The story is left to speak for itself. That is indeed bold.
It compares to the hypnotic passages describing physical effort in Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead (1948), though the accolade must go to Mailer’s book.
The tools for hyper linking, underlining, and bolding remain off line. Oh, hum.
The Secret in Their Eyes
Films are often based on books, but as a rule films simplify books. A novel of 400 pages is reduced to a screenplay of 60-80 pages or less. Minor characters are deleted, background events glossed over, and the context is muted, if not altogether blanked out, to focus on two or three protagonists. As a reader I have generally found the novel much better than the film that claims to be based on it. There are exceptions and I saw one recently. ‘The Secret in their eyes’ (2009) is from Argentina. To read all about it go to the Internet Movie Data Base. (The tools to insert hyperlinks, bolding, and so on remain off-line.)

It is long at 129 minutes and has a surprisingly high score on IMDB of 8.2. It is well deserved. I read the novel some time ago and my notes (yes, I keep notes about the novels I read) speak of a lack of tension, the icy detachment of the central character, underdevelopment of the judge … concluding that I will not bother to read any more by this writer. Oops! I must have missed quite a lot, because this film follows the book’s plot closely and it is a revelation.
On the surface it is a police procedural with a exotic setting: Argentina during the Dirty War of the 1970s. That is why I read it. Though my notes also say that the Dirty War is never mentioned and there is only one character who seems to have anything to do with it. While that is literally true, the film unmistakably communicates the repression of the society, when even tying a shoe is suspicious, when it is far better not to know than to know … that secret.
Since most of the film is about files, judicial processes, and the writing of a novel an archaic Olivetti typewriter is where much of the action occurs. The lead is Benjamin Esposito. See the film poster above. While there are two murders, each brutal, the tone is, apart from those punctuations, contemplative and inward. The greatest tension in the film is the elevator ride in the devil’s lair. Nothing is said. But when the doors open the judge is gasping for breath and Benjamin is as pale as a ghost. See it!
For action fans there is one incredible scene at a soccer match that leaves one wondering how it was filmed, but filmed it was, not computer magic. The production and direction are supremely confident and fluid in this scene as throughout.
Espositio’s associate Pablo Sandoval also deserves a word. He is played by Guillermo Francella to a T. Sandoval is slovenly, disorganized, reckless, persistent, noble, and — at times — creative. It is his constant study of the files that produces the insight which both resolves the plot and states the meaning of the exercise. No one can change who he is. (Yes, no doubt the Word Police will pounce on that rendering as sexist though it is an accurate description of the point in the story, and it does not mix singular and plural.) Gomez is a fan of Racing soccer club and remains that even when he is on the run. Esposito is hopelessly and wordlessly in love with the judge and has been since the first moment he saw her. Sandoval is a nerd.
What I did not get from the book by Eduardo Sacheri, ‘La Pregunta de sus ojos’ (2005), which by the way I take to mean ‘The question of her eyes,’ is the parallels between the two, intersecting cases of love at a distance.
But thanks to the players and the pacing that gives priority to looks, pauses, and hesitations, it becomes clear first to the viewer and then to the protagonist Benjamin. His unspoken love for the judge is very like the love Isidore Gomez had for his victim, and like Isidore he is incapable of expressing it in a positive way. Or is he? On several occasions the damn he has built around his emotions seems about to burst, but it holds, until a delightful, if incredible, last scene when the judge says, with characteristic understatement, ‘It will be complicated.’
Pedants note. The novel, in editions after the film, has been retitled to match the film.
Conclusion? I will re-read the book, and I suggest that others might do both, read the book and see the film. What is that secret? I think I know. We each have to find it for ourselves.
SBS late night movies has once again given us a gem.
The dean of film reviewers, Roger Ebert, gave it a glowing review. By the way, he is absolutely right about the judge. (As noted above, the hyperlink tool remains unavailable.)
Bony and Arthur Upfield
I started reading Arthur Upfield novels in the 1970s. I liked them for their strong sense of place, ear for the spoken Strine, and the fast pace of the mystery within them. I watched the television series when it came along to see how it translated these qualities to the screen. Upfield published the first book in 1929 and the last in …. 1963: thirty-four in all. He worked at it.
I recently re-read the only one from that period that I kept, The Death of a Lake, and found it possessed all those characteristics. I have also been listening to several of them as audio books, and the same holds true.
Of course, they are of their time and place. The racism, the sexism, the crude manners and mores, these are all there to offend those looking for offense. For others, they document those times and places.
We found the NITV documentary on Upfield and Bony very interesting. The debates among the talking heads about cultural appropriation were a tedious and shallow recitation of cliches without a comprehension of the implications. That said, the rest was informative and engaging.
http://www.nitv.org.au/fx-program.cfm?pid=62639834-A5F1-B003-7954E52912FEAE0B
The tools for underlining, hyperlinking, etc remain unavailable. I have reported this several times. Oh hum.
Samara
We enjoyed watching Samsara at the Dendy Newtown. Breath-taking visuals from around the world combined with uplifting music. No Brad Pitt, no screen play written by a case of arrested development, no shouting, no message shoved down one’s eyes. A meditation, most of which works, some of which does not. All trip and no arrival, much like life. So many arresting images, so many of them completely foreign and yet familiar for all that.
http://barakasamsara.com/
Once again, well still, really, the tools for underlining and linking are unavailable. Cut and paste the link above to see more.
Fly Away Peter by David Malouf
I have read all of David Malouf’s novels, I thought. Each year I give the undergraduate intern with whom I work a David Malouf novel as a thank you. These interns are international students, and I reason that a Malouf novel gives them a little more of Australia to take home. I also think that they should read novels, and that having one in hand before a long flight home to Sweden, Germany, Poland, or the United States might be read. One lives in hope for there is no other way to live.
In july 2012 when I purchased the annual Malouf novel for the intern, I noticed that among the list of his novels there was an early one which I had not read, Fly Away Peter (1982).
I put it on my Amazon Wish List and sure enough, Santa gave it to me for Christmas, in the person of daughter Julie.
Teaching and Learning
I recently published a piece titled ‘Approaches to Learning and Teaching: Some Observations,’ in Analytic Teaching and Philosophical Praxis, Volume 33 (2012), pp: 65-71.
To have a look: select, copy, and past the link below into a browser, and click enter.
http://www.viterbo.edu/uploadedFiles/academics/letters/philosophy/atp/Jackson-WIP.pdf
The tools for underlining and hyperlinking remain off-line.
Krimie Travelogue
James McClure, The Steam Pig (1971). This series is now being reprinted. They are of their time and place, the Republic of South Africa in the 1960s, replete with institutionalized racism, colour coding of one and all, English-Boer hostility, and casual brutality. Sergeant Tromp Kramer, a Boer, and his Bantu assistant Mickey Zondi get on with the police procedural, leaving the moralizing to the reader.
I do know about underlining title but once again the tools for underlining and hyperlinking are not available.
The World According to Murdoch
News Flash! This just in from Pox TV News:
Rupert Murdoch jets to New York City later today to swear in Mitt Romney as president of the United States. Romney has named his cabinet as Sarah Palin as Secretary of State, Mike Huckabee as Secretary for Regulating Private Life as God Wants, Newt Gringrich as Secretary for Fox, Karl Rove will be Secretary for Truth, and Athena Starwomen Secretary of the Treasury. After the ceremony on Wall Street with a small and select audience of yes-sayers, a random selection of workers’ pension funds will be divided among the guests. Trickle-up is the new administration’s chief policy.
President Romney’s first act will be to visit England and pardon all Murdochs of everything, past, present, and future.
Of course the lackeys of the liberal media have made the usual carping noises, e.g., New York City is not the capital of the United States, pension funds should not stolen, an astrologer might not be the best choice for cabinet, and the US President has no authority in England, which is the United Kingdom. Oh, and the biased allegation that Romney did not win the election. Typical!