WA author Liz Byrski. Photo via www.panmacmillan.com.au
Justice
The juxtaposition of campaigning American lawyers Bryan Stephenson (Just Mercy: a Story of Justice and Redemption, Spiegel and Grau, New York 2014) and former US Marine Michael Mori (In the Company of Cowards, Penguin Australia/Viking, 2014) was a powerful combo. Both men reviled the increasing corruption of the justice system, and of the judiciary (via elections, influence, and money) in the US, as well as serious anomalies in Australia. Stephenson warned that the death penalty of itself would undermine the rule of law in any country operating that punishment, staining all associated with it. Governments can build power and persuade people to give up their basic rights if they can make their citizens afraid and angry enough, he said.
There were many electric sound bites, for example: Stephenson – America has never fully confronted the legacy of slavery and racism and needs a Truth and Reconciliation process, as does Australia, to respect the survivors of racism equally with the survivors of the World War II Holocaust; if President Obama said the Guantanamo prison should be kept open, it would probably close at last, so strong was the desire to stop this President achieving any success; Mori – the British should be held accountable for most of the problems of the world; the Australian legal system has disenfranchised the middle class (because it cannot access legal aid).
Biography
Two journalist-biographers, Erik Jensen (Acute Misfortune, the Life and Death of Adam Cullen, Black Inc, Australia 2014) and Hamish McDonald (A War of Words, the man who talked 4000 Japanese into Surrender, University of Queensland Press, 2014) have charted the lives of two real-life characters so extraordinary as to be almost unbelievable, as I heard at my next session. Controversial but collectible Australian artist Adam Cullen, who died in 2012 at the age of 46, was a pathological liar (‘Everything he told me in the first six months turned out to be untrue,’ said Jensen) and a drug addict. Yet Jensen, only 19 when he began the four-year odyssey that this biography became, managed to come to an understanding and acceptance of his infuriating and tortured, child-like subject (in whose spare room he was living) that approached unconditional love – despite the trauma of being shot at and pushed off a moving motorbike by Cullen.
In McDonald’s case, his meticulously researched subject Charles Bavier, European yet Japanese, Australian yet Oriental, was an adventurer in the grand spy tradition, seeing action in China, Malaya and Gallipoli. Bavier played a pivotal role in the western intelligence services, conducting psychological warfare against his childhood homeland, Japan, during World War II.
Translocation
Syrian-born New Yorker Rayya Elias’ memoir Harley Loco (Bloomsbury Circus, US 2013) is as tough as its author, who swears, a lot. The book recounts the pain of the migrant’s alienation and dislocation via Elias’ own descent into sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, quite literally. On show were Elias’ wounds, first inflicted when as a child of seven, she arrived in Detroit, USA, from a comfortable life in Aleppo, Christian but without a word of English; thus began a cycle of bullying, resentment, anomie and self-destruction. But in time she found her métier in hairdressing, music and film-making, and resolved her sexuality as gay.
Partnering Elias onstage was Pakistani stand-up comic Sami Shah (I Migrant, Allen & Unwin, 2014), showcasing the migrant’s most effective coping mechanism: humour. Sami’s unique contribution to the cultural life of the small Western Australian town, Northam, where his visa has required him to live until now, is already local legend. During the Festival, he revealed that he had received approval for his Permanent Residence just a fortnight ago, bizarrely making his residence in Northam voluntary for the first time.
A poignant moment came in the Q&A session when an apparent European migrant of the 1950s who had then been told firmly that he should assimilate as an Australian ASAP, asked Sami whether this was something that the new wave of migrants and refugees cared about any more. Sami’s response was instructive: ‘If you want me to care about the good things in Australia, and things like Gallipoli, then I will also bloody well go on caring about the other side of things, for instance the Indigenous people of Australia.’
Other minds​
I went on to an insightful dialogue about ageing. Not only is 30 year-old British first-time novelist Emma Healeycomfortable writing from inside the head of an octogenarian suffering from dementia (Elizabeth Is Missing, Viking, UK 2014) but she is distinctly uncomfortable writing about herself or her own generation: ‘I don’t seek that catharsis; I just feel mortified!’
As an only child, Healey has always revelled in talking with older people. Her densely crafted story, based on her own grandmother, meshes two mysteries via the fading mind of Maud, who believes something has happened to her friend Elizabeth.
Healey understands the responsibility of writing about dementia and hopes she can help people see dementia as just another condition of living, to be recognised and dealt with in an empathetic way.
Healey’s presentation was paired with that of 71 year-old established Western Australian author Liz Byrski, who also specialises in the topic of older women (Getting On: Some Thoughts on Women and Ageing, Momentum, Sydney 2012) and who published the first of her seven novels at the age of 60. Like Healey, Byrski has always related well with the elderly: ‘I was happy to get old. I thought older people had a wonderful life and I wanted it.’
Free willIntrigued by Christine Kenneally’s exploration of how biology, psychology and history come together to shape human life (The Invisible History of the Human Race, How DNA and History Shape Our Identities and Our Futures, Viking 2014), I went to watch Kenneally discuss with ‘original sin’ expert James Boyce (Born Bad: Original Sin and the Making of the Western World, Black Inc, 2014) the existence or otherwise of ‘free will’.
Boyce declared original sin to be ‘a barbaric doctrine’, reminding us that it was a western Christian tradition unknown to eastern forms of Christianity. Free market economics, he said, had persuaded us that human beings are by nature self-maximising units in search of profit, not innately decent or good. Kenneally’s pitch similarly posits ‘something beyond’: while evidentiary science, genetics and the human genome (only fully sequenced since 2000) can explain much of our history and genealogy in fascinating ways, there are still other factors beyond the purely deterministic that are worthy of our consideration.
Perth Writers’ Festival
19-22 February as part of Perth International Arts Festival
www.perthfestival.com.au
