Gregory Day
Autor von The patron Saint of Eels
Über den Autor
Reihen
Werke von Gregory Day
Fish ladder 1 Exemplar
The Bell of the World 1 Exemplar
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Getagged
Wissenswertes
- Geburtstag
- 1968-04-23
- Geschlecht
- male
- Nationalität
- Australia
- Geburtsort
- Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Wohnorte
- Victoria, Australia
- Berufe
- author
poet
musician - Kurzbiographie
- Gregory Day is a writer, poet and musician whose debut novel, The Patron Saint of Eels (Picador, 2005), won the prestigious Australian Literature Society Gold Medal in 2006, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize for a first novel, and included on the VCE Literature syllabus for five years. He lives on the southwest coast of Victoria, Australia.
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The patron saint of eels von Gregory Day
This is a beautiful book. I loved every minute of reading it.
As I made my morning coffee today in the quiet of my kitchen, a bird was singing outside. Mindful of the motif of listening in Gregory Day's new novel The Bell of the World, I paused, and listened, really listened, so that I could identify the bird.
The Bell of the World is a challenging book, not because it's hard to read and make sense of, but because it challenges our ideas about what art is, what music is, and even what literature is.
Titled 'Big Cutting Hill' and set in the early years of the 20th century, Part One introduces Sarah Hutchinson, a troubled young woman under the care of an Indigenous woman called Maisie. Sarah's immediate family is absent from the novel, so we know only that her mother drank to excess and that after her parents' acrimonious divorce Sarah was packed off to boarding school in Devon. There, bells punctuate her day and she feels claustrophobic after the wide open spaces of Australia. From there she is offloaded to Uncle Ferny's bohemian circle in Rome.
In Rome, in artistic circles (that include 'poetivores'!) Sarah is exposed to (and excited by) modernism. But sent home to Uncle Ferny's farm Ngangahook she is confused, lethargic and depressed, and it is Maisie's wisdom that begins to heal her. This healing coincides with the return of Uncle Ferny (who is hairy from reading i.e. unshaven!)
In Part Two, (in Sarah's voice) Ngangahook illustrates the clash between European settler values and the Hutchinsons' desire to belong in their landscape. The local wannabe dignitary Selwyn Atchison wants a civic bell to dignify the town (and himself), expressing...
Sarah and Uncle Ferny reject the entire concept. Such a bell would impose itself on the bush which has its own ancient soundscape of birds and the rustlings of native fauna and the whistling of the wind in the trees.
(The point is that nations do irreversible things without any consideration for how it might impact globally... climate change, nuclear waste, starting endless wars, noise pollution from planes, blighting the night sky with satellites, invading privacy with drones. None of us can escape from it, and on and on and on it goes with global forums powerless to put a stop to it.)
Uncle Ferny's refusal to contribute to the fund to pay for this intrusive bell arouses not only indignation but ostracism in the town. The townsfolk were already bemused by Sarah's concerts on her 'altered piano'. In her narrative she includes a newspaper clipping:
What is music? Sarah's composition is titled 'My Autumn' and it distinguishes the Australian autumn from the European one with its very sound. We learn later in Part Three that Sarah — alone on an isolated property — is creating experimental music that could take its place amongst the most radical of experimentalists in the 20th century.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2023/03/06/the-bell-of-the-world-2023-by-gregory-day/… (mehr)
The Bell of the World is a challenging book, not because it's hard to read and make sense of, but because it challenges our ideas about what art is, what music is, and even what literature is.
Titled 'Big Cutting Hill' and set in the early years of the 20th century, Part One introduces Sarah Hutchinson, a troubled young woman under the care of an Indigenous woman called Maisie. Sarah's immediate family is absent from the novel, so we know only that her mother drank to excess and that after her parents' acrimonious divorce Sarah was packed off to boarding school in Devon. There, bells punctuate her day and she feels claustrophobic after the wide open spaces of Australia. From there she is offloaded to Uncle Ferny's bohemian circle in Rome.
In Rome, in artistic circles (that include 'poetivores'!) Sarah is exposed to (and excited by) modernism. But sent home to Uncle Ferny's farm Ngangahook she is confused, lethargic and depressed, and it is Maisie's wisdom that begins to heal her. This healing coincides with the return of Uncle Ferny (who is hairy from reading i.e. unshaven!)
In Part Two, (in Sarah's voice) Ngangahook illustrates the clash between European settler values and the Hutchinsons' desire to belong in their landscape. The local wannabe dignitary Selwyn Atchison wants a civic bell to dignify the town (and himself), expressing...
...his own Presbyterian need for a bell to civilise, indeed to drown out the pollinating salt airs of this small inlet into, and out of, the sea. (p.69)
Sarah and Uncle Ferny reject the entire concept. Such a bell would impose itself on the bush which has its own ancient soundscape of birds and the rustlings of native fauna and the whistling of the wind in the trees.
No schoolbell, no churchbell, no bell for service nor for storm. Just the silence that is so filled with sound. The reach of the pealing bell of the moonlured surf, beseeching no one at the rivermouth. That, I came to believe, through the pressure of engagement, is the only bell of auditory range that ever an inlet wanted to be heard.
But still: a niceness in the offing, something coming our way other than weather, that's what caused the bitter unsuccessful petition to so deepen and endure. (p.66)
(The point is that nations do irreversible things without any consideration for how it might impact globally... climate change, nuclear waste, starting endless wars, noise pollution from planes, blighting the night sky with satellites, invading privacy with drones. None of us can escape from it, and on and on and on it goes with global forums powerless to put a stop to it.)
Uncle Ferny's refusal to contribute to the fund to pay for this intrusive bell arouses not only indignation but ostracism in the town. The townsfolk were already bemused by Sarah's concerts on her 'altered piano'. In her narrative she includes a newspaper clipping:
In a novel procedure Miss Hutchinson had adjusted the workings and thus the sound of the homestead's grand piano with the following items from the field: a bullock bone, a piece of ironbark, a banksia cob, a scrap of 8 gauge wire, a kangaroo rib, a train ticket, a fray of crinoline, a bandage, a letter, fern fronds, a bridle hasp and fox-fur. (p.61)
What is music? Sarah's composition is titled 'My Autumn' and it distinguishes the Australian autumn from the European one with its very sound. We learn later in Part Three that Sarah — alone on an isolated property — is creating experimental music that could take its place amongst the most radical of experimentalists in the 20th century.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2023/03/06/the-bell-of-the-world-2023-by-gregory-day/… (mehr)
At the center of Gregory Day's A Sand Archive is the figure of F(rancis) B. Herschell, a figure who is reconstructed by Day's narrator from the archive of papers he left behind upon his death. The narrator knows Herschell slightly, as the latter occasionally comes into the bookshop in Geelong where he works.
The narrator's interest in Herschell is piqued after borrowing a book from the library titled The Great Ocean Road: Dune Stabilisation and Other Engineering Difficulties, a self-published text that, despite its dry-sounding title, has glimpses of poetry in it. Against all expectations, Herschell is an incredibly well-read man who reads beyond his field of engineering, and seems particularly interested in French literature and culture. The opening chapter, for instance, recalls Herschell coming into the bookstore and looking up books about Proust.
Herschell's story mainly takes in the 1960s, when he is charged with helping to stabilize a section of the Great Ocean Road. At odds with his boss, Gibbon, Herschell has the idea of using grass to keep the sand in place. As such, he applies for a scholarship to study how this feat had been managed in the sand dunes of France.
Upon his arrival in Paris in 1968, he goes to a museum to view some paintings by Mondrian, who early in his career had painted the sand dunes in his native Holland. At the museum, he meets a young woman, Mathilde, who invites him to join in the street activities that lead to the famous events of May '68.
Herschell and Mathilde, together with Prof. Lacombe, go down to south-east France to study the sand dunes. Mathilde is originally from this area, and she stays with her parents, while Herschell sleeps in the old mill. There, the two of them become lovers, but she decides to leave him: her proper place, she decides, is to follow the revolutionary impulses that are alive in the world at that time.
Herschell returns to Australia and applies the lessons he learned about using grass to stabilize the Great Ocean Road. Despite the success of this venture, he increasingly comes to regret his decision, as the kind of grass he used is intrusive and does not suit the Australian environment. The narrator also projects onto Herschell a deep sadness about his failed relationship with Mathilde.
The narrator learns about Herschell's recent death from Anna Neilson, a local woman who was Herschell's friend and lover in his later years back in Australia. He reflects on Herschell's legacy, contrasting the violent outburst that accompanied the events of May '68 with the quiet revolution that Herschell was able to effect back home in Australia.
Although I liked the novel overall, I had some mixed feelings about The Sand Archive. Its strengths lie in its the intelligence and cultural sweep of Day's vision for, although he is in some ways a regional writer, his willingness to look beyond his own culture to figures like Proust, Mondrian, Camus, and many other sources of inspiration gives the novel a level of sophistication that is worthy of the very best Australian fiction.
The weaknesses of the novel lie in two main areas. First, it can sometimes be rather didactic in the way it presents its ideas. The story repeatedly pushes a kind of Catholic mysticism that bleeds over into its appreciation of nature and the environment, a perspective that sits rather awkwardly next to its French, atheistic, existentialist reference points.
There is also a kind of romanticism about the landscape, too, so that while I generally agree with Day's politics, I didn't find his presentation of them always to be convincing. The part I disliked most, though, was the way in which the narrator colonized Herschell's feelings. He regularly imposes his own emotions and expectations onto his subject in a way that felt stifling, even disrespectful.
These blemishes are minor, however, compared to the larger strengths of the book. Herschell is indeed a compelling character, especially in the context of the conservative Australia of the 1960s, and Day's connection of this context to the events of May '68 in France make for an interesting and thoughtful reflection on change and revolution.… (mehr)
The narrator's interest in Herschell is piqued after borrowing a book from the library titled The Great Ocean Road: Dune Stabilisation and Other Engineering Difficulties, a self-published text that, despite its dry-sounding title, has glimpses of poetry in it. Against all expectations, Herschell is an incredibly well-read man who reads beyond his field of engineering, and seems particularly interested in French literature and culture. The opening chapter, for instance, recalls Herschell coming into the bookstore and looking up books about Proust.
Herschell's story mainly takes in the 1960s, when he is charged with helping to stabilize a section of the Great Ocean Road. At odds with his boss, Gibbon, Herschell has the idea of using grass to keep the sand in place. As such, he applies for a scholarship to study how this feat had been managed in the sand dunes of France.
Upon his arrival in Paris in 1968, he goes to a museum to view some paintings by Mondrian, who early in his career had painted the sand dunes in his native Holland. At the museum, he meets a young woman, Mathilde, who invites him to join in the street activities that lead to the famous events of May '68.
Herschell and Mathilde, together with Prof. Lacombe, go down to south-east France to study the sand dunes. Mathilde is originally from this area, and she stays with her parents, while Herschell sleeps in the old mill. There, the two of them become lovers, but she decides to leave him: her proper place, she decides, is to follow the revolutionary impulses that are alive in the world at that time.
Herschell returns to Australia and applies the lessons he learned about using grass to stabilize the Great Ocean Road. Despite the success of this venture, he increasingly comes to regret his decision, as the kind of grass he used is intrusive and does not suit the Australian environment. The narrator also projects onto Herschell a deep sadness about his failed relationship with Mathilde.
The narrator learns about Herschell's recent death from Anna Neilson, a local woman who was Herschell's friend and lover in his later years back in Australia. He reflects on Herschell's legacy, contrasting the violent outburst that accompanied the events of May '68 with the quiet revolution that Herschell was able to effect back home in Australia.
Although I liked the novel overall, I had some mixed feelings about The Sand Archive. Its strengths lie in its the intelligence and cultural sweep of Day's vision for, although he is in some ways a regional writer, his willingness to look beyond his own culture to figures like Proust, Mondrian, Camus, and many other sources of inspiration gives the novel a level of sophistication that is worthy of the very best Australian fiction.
The weaknesses of the novel lie in two main areas. First, it can sometimes be rather didactic in the way it presents its ideas. The story repeatedly pushes a kind of Catholic mysticism that bleeds over into its appreciation of nature and the environment, a perspective that sits rather awkwardly next to its French, atheistic, existentialist reference points.
There is also a kind of romanticism about the landscape, too, so that while I generally agree with Day's politics, I didn't find his presentation of them always to be convincing. The part I disliked most, though, was the way in which the narrator colonized Herschell's feelings. He regularly imposes his own emotions and expectations onto his subject in a way that felt stifling, even disrespectful.
These blemishes are minor, however, compared to the larger strengths of the book. Herschell is indeed a compelling character, especially in the context of the conservative Australia of the 1960s, and Day's connection of this context to the events of May '68 in France make for an interesting and thoughtful reflection on change and revolution.… (mehr)
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