Tangential

I'm feeling in the mood for a little carving and block-printing session. The inky muse is sitting on my shoulder.

This must have been because I sorted out my workroom yesterday and piled up all my lovely white and creamy-calico cottons, plus some of the brights I dyed a few months back.

We'll see what eventuates!

:: This is the papercut picture I cut for Tracey, way over in Far North Queensland. As well as bloggers, we are longtime Scrabble buddies on facebook, and while we were chatting during one of our games (she probably whipped my arse as usual), we organised a swap: a papercut for some of Tracey's brilliant quilting.

Tracey started the ball rolling by quilting this quilt I'd made for a cousin's first baby in England, and she did an amazingly beautiful job ...

... all swirls and stars. Gorgeous! I'm expecting to hear from Brighton any day now to say the quilt has arrived, and that baby Jasmine will stay warm and cosy beneath it during the rest of their Arctic winter. Brrr!

:: I'm reading Someone at a Distance, by Dorothy Whipple. It's a beautiful Persephone edition I bought in Powell's bookstore in Portland, Oregon — isn't that an exquisite cover?

(I went mad in there - imagine, a bookstore starts in a shop on a corner, then it buys and expands into the shop next door, and then the shop round the corner ... and eventually it takes up an entire city block, on all levels; a rabbit warren of books ... sigh!)

Whipple (1893-1966) is a brilliant writer, subtle and fluent, with a perceptive eye for characters. She says a lot by understatement and quiet observation — admirable.

Here in Australia, we haven't heard of her very much, if at all, but I recall listening to a few of her short stories being read by English luminaries through the BBC Radio 4 website, and was blown away by her story-telling.

Someone at a Distance, set just after the end of the war in the early 1950s, is about a warm, loving, happy family and the effect of the arrival in their midst of a cold-as-ice, hard-as-nails French girl, who is to be a paid companion to the family matriarch.

It's fabulous. As someone on the back-cover blurb says, Whipple is the 'literary heir to Mrs Gaskell'.

:: I'm off now to carve some rubber.

On isolation I watched a great documentary about Annie Proulx last night. It was a few years old, and in it she was researching and writing That Old Ace in the Hole, which I think was published in 2003. It was a fascinating documentary, though i confess I haven't read anything of hers since Postcards, which I didn't like nearly as much as The Shipping News, which remains one of my favourite novels.
Anyway, the program told of Annie's great love of driving herself all over the US, and how she lived in the Panhandle areas of Texas, in a little house all by herself, to research the hog farms and rural environment of this largely neglected part of the US for Aces in the Hole. And then, to write her book, she took herself off home, briefly, to her house in Wyoming, where she lives way out in the sticks so she can ski in winter.
There, she organised all her research material, and eventually took off again for her other house in a tiny little seaside village in Newfoundland.
All of which brought to mind our recent visit to Ghost Ranch, in northern New Mexico. On two or three hectares in the middle of this huge ranch, Georgia O'Keeffe had a low-slung adobe house, Rancho de los Burros, in which she lived off and on from the 1940s, in contented and productive solitude.
Her husband, Arthur Stieglitz, remained in New York, holding showings of her paintings, pushing up her profile and her prices. You can visit Ghost Ranch and stand on spots that must have been darned close to the actual places O'Keeffe set up her easel to paint some of her landscapes. But unfortunately, you cannot visit her house, which remains private and inaccessible — though you can catch a glimpse of it from the track. (If you click on the pic, you'll get a bigger image.) Well, I was enchanted by all this, and in raptures over the desert landscape. I joked to David that this would be a perfect set-up for us. I could live out here, painting and working in the beautiful wilderness, while he could live in some city somewhere, doing amazing PR for his wife and organising fabulous exhibitions of her work. Just the ticket.
But then I got thinking about the solitude. The place is remote even today. In O'Keeffe's day, getting into Santa Fe, which is about 95 kilometres away, or Taos, almost the same distance, would have been major undertakings on dirt roads in slow vehicles.
She had no electricity at her house, either.
I could get by without TV and computer, and maybe even radio, so long as I had the means to listen to music or something.
O'Keeffe had occasional help, and visitors and even guests, and the main ranch house was only about a a couple of kilometres away.
But those evenings must have been very long and quiet.
I don't think I could have hacked it — and even if my set-up was more like Annie Proulx's, with electricity, and connections to the outside world, I'd still find that solitary life unsettling, I think.

Booking through Thursday
This week's question:

1. How did you come across your favorite author(s)? Recommended by a friend? Stumbled across at a bookstore? A book given to you as a gift?
2. Was it love at first sight? Or did the love affair evolve over a long acquaintance?

My favourite authors have either been recommended and introduced to me by friends (Barbara Kingsolver, the Mitfords, Agatha Christie, Jane Austen, Ian Rankin, Margery Allingham, etc etc) or have become so by happy accident (Ian McEwan, Maggie O'Farrell, Dorothy L. Sayers, Kazuo Ishiguro, Minette Walters, Jhumpa Lahiri, Anita Brookner, etc etc).
Once I like them, I'll try anything they've written.
But as life's too short to spend reading time on stuff I can't stand, authors I don't enjoy rarely get the chance to worm their way into my affections.
Yes, I know: it's a major failing on my part. But stiff. I don't smoke, drink or fool around, so I'm allowed some peccadillos.

I will try out all recommendations by certain of my friends, though the resulting chemistry is occasionally unfavourable (Alexander McCall Smith, for example, John Banville, Cormac McCarthy et al).
And it's the same when I recommend books to others: they won't always gel.

So serendipity is a major force when I'm choosing reading matter.
My husband, who reads non-fiction (history and politics) and chooses many of his books only after meticulous research, reading reviews, and picking his way through recommendations, often says he can't believe how I can walk into a bookstore, choose a book seemingly on a whim, and then love it from cover to cover.
It's not always entirely whim, of course. I'll have a mental list (and these days, a hard copy of that list) of authors my friends and favourite bloggers are talking about, and I know where to roam as far as genre, subject matter, period and writing styles go.
And then, occasionally, a book sitting innocently on a bookstore shelf, not even among the new releases or bestsellers, will just strike a chord with me and I'll take a chance on it, driven by the blurb and a quick flick inside, and even, perhaps the cover. Now there's an admission!

Some of our best Australian writers

Dove Grey Reader, writer of a respected and well-read UK book blog, is wondering about authors from our part of the world, so I thought I'd list some of our many great writers.
And please, Aussie book-loving friends, do add some names here in your comments. I've been out of the country for a couple of years, so there are bound to be some names I haven't come across yet.
There'll also be names I've forgotten in the rush to assure anyone thinking about Australian literature that there is more to read — so much more — than Patrick White. Yes. He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1973, died in 1990, and is still revered. But please don't stop there.
I've put this list of authors, with a few notable titles, in alphabetical order, for easy access.

Murray Bail Eucalyptus 1998; Holden's Performance '02
Lily Brett Too Many Men '02, You Gotta Have Balls '06
Peter Carey Bliss '81, Illywhacker '85, etc. Bookers in '88 for Oscar and Lucinda and '01 for The True History of the Kelly Gang.
Peter Corris Doyen of Australian crime fiction. Cliff Hardy, his detective, appears in novels and short stories, including The Undertow '06
Bryce Courtenay Prolific, S. African-Australian. The Power of One '97, The Persimmon Tree '07
Robert Dessaix Essayist, novelist, journalist, well-known literary interviewer and commentator, Night Letters '96, Corfu '01, Travels with Turgenev '04 — see also this post by Ex Libris
Robert Drewe The Bodysurfers '83, The Drowner '97, The Shark Net '00
Nick Earls Fiction for adults and young adults. Zigzag Street '90s, Bachelor Kisses '90s, Perfect Skin '01, After Summer '05, Monica Bloom '06
Helen Garner Essayist, feature journalist, fiction and non-fiction writer. Monkey Grip '77, The Children's Bach '84, Cosmo Cosmolino '92, The First Stone '95
Kate Grenville Lilian's Story '85, Dark Places '94, The Idea of Perfection '99
Shirley Hazzard Bay of Noon '70, The Transit of Venus '80, The Great Fire '03
Thomas Keneally Playwright, screenwriter, author, made the Booker shortlist four times before winning in '82 for Schindler's Ark; also wrote The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith '72, An Angel in Australia 02, A Widow and Her Hero '07
David Malouf Poems, short stories, plays, novels. An Imaginary Life '78, Remembering Babylon '93, The Conversations at Curlow Creek '96
John Marsden One of the most popular Australian writers for children and young adults. So Much to Tell You '87, Tomorrow When the War Began '93 and the other six books in the series, to '97
Drusilla Modjeska Poppy '90, The Orchard '94, Stravinsky's Lunch '99, Timepieces '02
Sally Morgan Painter and writer. My Place '87
Craig Silvey Fabulous young Western Australian writer, whose first novel, Rhubarb, '04, was named WA's One Book for the 2005 Perth International Arts Festival
Randolph Stow Reclusive but wonderful Western Australian writer and poet. To the Islands '58, Tourmaline '63, The Merry-go-round in the Sea '65
Tim Winton Much-acclaimed and loved WA writer of novels, children's books, short stories and non-fiction. That Eye the Sky '86, Cloudstreet '91 etc. Shortlisted for the Booker in '95 for The Riders, and in '02 for Dirt Music.
Sue Woolfe Screenwriter, documentary writer and author. Painted Woman '89, Leaning Towards Infinity '96, The Secret Cure '03

Australia has some prestigious literature prizes. The Miles Franklin Award is given annually, for novels, while The Australian/Vogel Award is for younger writers (under 26, I think) who are very often the names to watch in future years. Then there are the Premier's Book Awards in each state.

Edited Dec 28.
This list is very light on in terms of older and classic Australian lit. I haven't mentioned Henry Handel Richardson, for example, or Marcus Clarke, Christina Stead, or Neville Shute ... I apologise!