A History of Books Read online

  A HISTORY OF BOOKS

  OTHER BOOKS BY GERALD MURNANE

  TAMARISK ROW

  A LIFETIME ON CLOUDS

  THE PLAINS

  LANDSCAPE WITH LANDSCAPE

  INLAND

  VELVET WATERS

  EMERALD BLUE

  INVISIBLE YET ENDURING LILACS

  BARLEY PATCH

  GERALD MURNANE

  A History of Books

  FIRST PUBLISHED IN 2012

  FROM THE WRITING & SOCIETY RESEARCH CENTRE

  AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN SYDNEY

  BY THE GIRAMONDO PUBLISHING COMPANY

  PO BOX 752

  ARTARMON NSW 1570 AUSTRALIA

  WWW.GIRAMONDOPUBLISHING.COM

  © GERALD MURNANE, 2012

  DESIGNED BY HARRY WILLIAMSON

  TYPESET BY ANDREW DAVIES

  IN 10/17 PT BASKERVILLE

  PRINTED AND BOUND BY LIGARE BOOK PRINTERS

  DISTRIBUTED IN AUSTRALIA BY NEWSOUTH BOOKS

  NATIONAL LIBRARY OF AUSTRALIA

  CATALOGUING -IN-PUBLICATION DATA :

  MURNANE, GERALD, 1939–

  A HISTORY OF BOOKS / GERALD MURNANE

  978-1-920882-85-3 (PBK .)

  A823.3

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  NO PART OF THIS PUBLICATION MAY BE REPRODUCED,

  STORED IN A RETRIEVAL SYSTEM OR TRANSMITTED

  IN ANY FORM OR BY ANY MEANS ELECTRONIC,

  MECHANICAL, PHOTOCOPYING OR OTHERWISE WITHOUT

  THE PRIOR PERMISSION OF THE PUBLISHER .

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ‘As It Were a Letter’ was first published in Southerly, 61,1 (2001); ‘The Boy’s Name Was David’ was first published in The Best Australian Stories (Black Inc, 2002); ‘Last Letter to a Niece’ was first published in The Best Australian Stories (Black Inc, 2001).

  This project has been assisted by the Commonwealth Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

  CONTENTS

  A History of Books

  As It Were a Letter

  The Boy’s Name Was David

  Last Letter to a Niece

  A History of Books

  After a certain age our memories are so intertwined with one another that what we are thinking of, the book we are reading, scarcely matters any more. We have put something of ourselves everywhere, everything is fertile, everything is dangerous, and we can make discoveries no less precious than in Pascal’s Pensées in an advertisement for soap.

  MARCEL PROUST, Remembrance of Things Past

  A man and a woman, husband and wife, were standing in the main square of a town such as might have been depicted, fifty and more years ago, in one or another so-called article about one or another country in Central America in one or another issue of the National Geographic Magazine. The time was probably mid-afternoon, and the air was surely hot. The man and the woman debated several matters during their time in the square. Once, at least, the woman struck the man and was struck in return. None of the disputes between the man and the woman had been resolved when he and she became a male and a female jaguar, or it may have been a male and a female hummingbird or a male and a female lizard.

  At some time during the 1970s, or it may have been earlier, the phrase magical realism became fashionable among the sorts of person who are paid to write comments on published works of fiction. Those persons mostly used the phrase when commenting on works of fiction by authors from the region known as Latin America. The persons seemed to believe that the authors mentioned had devised a new way of writing fiction. The authors themselves seemed mostly followers of fashion and ignorant. In their fiction, they reported things becoming other things or persons becoming other than persons as though such reports had not been included in works of fiction since so-called classical times. The phrase magical realism later fell out of fashion, and most of the works of fiction by the so-called magical realists seem nowadays forgotten.

  One of the least-praised of the works of fiction mentioned above might be reported as having been still remembered when the sentences hereabouts were being composed, which was about forty years after the publication of the English translation of the seldom-praised work. Not a word of the text itself was still remembered. The design of the dust jacket and even its predominant colours had been forgotten long before. The man who might have claimed to remember the work of fiction would have claimed no more than to be sometimes aware of the matters reported in the following paragraphs.

  A man and a woman, husband and wife, were lying on a double bed in an upstairs flat in a certain inner suburb of Melbourne. The time was mid-afternoon, and the air in the flat was hot. The man and the woman debated several matters during their time on the bed. Once, at least, the woman struck the man and was struck in return. None of the differences between the man and the woman had been resolved when he and she copulated on the bed or when she afterwards turned away and fell asleep while he remained lying on the bed and watching images in his mind of a male and a female jaguar or it may have been a male and a female hummingbird or a male and a female lizard.

  The man watching the images supposed that he was remembering the contents of a certain book of fiction that he had read several years before. The man still remembered the title of the book and the name of the author and the colours and the design of the dust jacket. Now, so the man supposed, he was remembering some of the contents of the book. He could not remember any of the text of the book but he was remembering some of the characters and some of the action, or so he would have said if the woman had woken and had asked him what he was thinking about.

  The images in the mind of the watching man – the imagejaguars or the image-hummingbirds or the image-lizards – debated several matters with one another or savaged one another or copulated for as long as the man supposed that he was remembering a certain book of fiction. The man believed himself to be a careful reader of books of fiction. He felt obliged to read carefully and to think afterwards about the fiction that he read. He hoped that he himself might become in the future the author of some or another work of fiction, but he supposed that he had first to learn certain secrets known only to authors of fiction. The man had never written more than a few pages of fiction before he had discarded them because he had seemed, while he was writing, merely to be reporting details of images of persons or of places or of objects or of events in his own mind whereas he had wanted his writing to give rise to images that would surprise him as he had been surprised at first by the images of the jaguars and of the hummingbirds and of the lizards while he had been reading the book of fiction that he supposed he was remembering while he lay on his and his wife’s bed during the hot afternoon.

  The man’s wife remained asleep, but the man remained awake. The woman wore, while she slept, an undergarment that she called a slip. While he lay on the bed, the man began to look at the woman through half-closed eyes and with his head held at an angle. The man soon observed that the smoothness of the fabric on the woman’s hips brought to his mind an image of the skin of the lizard that he had lately seemed to remember having read about. The colour of the hair on the woman’s head was golden brown. Sometimes, the man observed that the shining of the sunlight on a few stray hairs at the woman’s forehead brought to his mind an image of the plumage of the hummingbird that he had lately seemed to remember having read about.

  The man would have liked to observe some or another detail of the woman’s appearance that would bring to his mind some or another image-detail of a certain jaguar, but before he could observe such a detail the man fell asleep.

  While he slept, the man was, of course, unaware of his surroundings and of his own appearance. If, however, he could have observed his and his wife’s b
edroom as though it had been a room about to be mentioned in a work of fiction that would later become a book of fiction and as though he had been the writer of the work and had been in possession of certain secrets known only to writers of fiction, then the man might have observed the bag that his wife called her toiletry bag, which lay just then in a drawer behind him and the fabric of which was spotted like the skin of some or another beast of prey. Or, the conjectured writer might have observed that the man asleep on the bed had assumed a posture not unlike that of some or another beast preparing to leap towards its prey.

  A naked woman, or a statue of a naked woman, may have been standing for some time in the main square of a town that may have lain beside the Mediterranean Sea. The woman, or the statue of the woman, may have been the only person or object in the square. The time may have been mid-afternoon, and the weather was surely hot.

  The naked woman was, in fact, an image of a naked woman; or, the statue was an image of a statue. Likewise, the main square was an image of a main square. These images appeared in various parts of a reproduction of a photograph of some or another painting. The reproduction had appeared at some or another time in some or another book, or it may have been some or another illustrated magazine.

  An image of the reproduction mentioned above had later appeared in the mind of a man who was lying on a couch in the lounge room of a certain house in a certain outer suburb of Melbourne on a hot afternoon. The image had appeared only a few moments after the man had woken from a brief sleep. The man had lain on the couch during the early afternoon because he had been unable to sleep during much of the previous night. During that night, the man had debated many matters with his wife.

  The man lying on the couch was at home alone while his wife was at work and while their children were at school. The man and his wife had agreed, more than a year before, that the man would stay at home for two years so that he could write a work of fiction that he had wanted for long to write. Now, the first of the two years had passed. During that year, the man had done all the housework and the shopping that he had previously agreed to do and had likewise cared for his and his wife’s children but he had written only a few pages of the work of fiction that he had wanted for long to write. During much of the time when he might have been writing, the man had read one or another of the many books that he owned. Sometimes, while he read, the man had felt as though he was about to learn some or another secret known only to writers of fiction but later, when he had tried to go on writing his own fiction, he had found that what he wrote brought to his mind only images that had first appeared there while he had been reading one or another book of fiction whereas he had hoped that his writing would bring to his mind images that had never previously appeared there. Whenever he had found this, the man had discarded the pages that he had been writing at the time.

  When the man had first lain on the couch in the early afternoon mentioned above, he had had in mind an image of a certain disciple of a certain male character whose name was also the title of a book of fiction that the man had read several years before but had mostly forgotten. The man who lay on the couch had remembered, while he lay, that the book had been first published in the French language ten years before he had been born and that the author of the book, whose name seemed Italian, had been born in Greece and was known as a painter of paintings rather than as an author of books of fiction. The subject matter, so to call it, of many of the author’s paintings was often described as surrealistic. The man lying on the couch had once seen a reproduction of a photograph of one of the author’s paintings. Of the images in the reproduction, the man recalled only an image of a naked woman or of a statue of a naked woman alone in a large square at a time that was surely afternoon on a day of exceptional heat. The man on the couch could recall none of the text of the book of fiction written by the painter. Of the hours that he had spent in reading the book, the man could recall only a few moments when he had learned from the text that the chief character of the fiction had once advised one of his disciples that the clearest and most memorable dreams were those that occurred to a person when he or she had fallen asleep during the afternoon of some or another day of sunshine and heat.

  The man lying on the couch had dreamed a clear and memorable dream before he had woken on the hot afternoon. The events of the dream resembled some of the events that had taken place on a certain hot afternoon ten years before. On that afternoon, the man and his wife had attended a wedding in a certain provincial city far from Melbourne. The man’s wife wore to the wedding an expensive dress and hat that she had bought for the occasion. In mid-afternoon, when the guests were arriving at the wedding reception, the man’s wife had asked him to take a photograph of her in her new outfit, as she called it. The man had then gone to fetch his and his wife’s camera from their motor car. When the man met up again with his wife, she was standing alone in a small paved courtyard. She then stood in front of two ornamental columns while the man took several photographs. While his wife posed for the photographs, the man became aware that he and his wife had not been alone together during the previous three days and two evenings. He and she had spent most of that time in a house belonging to relatives of his wife and had had to sleep in separate bedrooms. After the wedding reception, the man and his wife would have to return once more to the house mentioned and to sleep once more in the bedrooms mentioned. On the following morning, they would set out for Melbourne. They would set out early in order to avoid the heat of the day.

  While the man was taking photographs of his wife, he foresaw the two of them arriving in the early afternoon at their upstairs flat in a certain inner suburb of Melbourne and soon afterwards lying on their bed wearing only their underclothes and without having debated any matters beforehand.

  An image of a marble statue of a naked man appeared in the mind of a boy of ten years. The details of the image, so the boy supposed, were such as might have appeared just then in the mind of a girl of about ten years who was sitting in sight of the boy and was looking into a certain volume of an encyclopedia. The most noticeable of those details were an image-sac and an image-tube that dangled between the image-legs of the image-statue.

  The boy and the girl sat at separate desks in the single classroom of a primary school with no more than a dozen pupils. The large window at one side of the classroom overlooked mostly level grassy countryside with a line of trees in the far distance. The trees were the nearest trees of a forest extending on its far side further than the boy had ever travelled in that direction. The boy had once travelled with his parents and his brother on a road of red gravel that led for a few miles in among the overarching trees of the forest. After that day, the boy had sometimes seen in his mind an image of some or another clearing in some or another forest and had wished that he could have gone alone into such a clearing whenever he had feared that some or another person or persons might infer from his, the boy’s, demeanour what sort of images he saw for the time being in his mind or what sort of feelings those images caused in him.

  Each of the children in the classroom mentioned had a book in front of him or her, although some children whispered or fidgeted rather than read. The teacher’s desk was in a corner behind the children. The teacher was a man considered by the children to be old but was perhaps no older than forty years. His chair was tilted backwards, and he sat with his head against the wall behind him and with his eyes closed. Some of the children supposed that the teacher had fallen asleep because the afternoon was hot. The oldest girl often asserted that the teacher fell asleep on most afternoons because he drank during every lunch hour from a flask of brandy that he kept inside his jacket. The girl asserted also that her parents were going to report the teacher soon to the district inspector of schools.

  At some time during the last hour of every school day, the teacher allowed the children to put away their schoolbooks and to do what he called free reading. Each child then chose a book from the cupboard that was called the library. The boy in whos
e mind the image-statue had appeared had read every book in the so-called library. Some books he had read several times. On the day when the image-statue was in his mind, he was reading for the third or the fourth time a book that would never be mentioned in any text that he would read during the sixty-one years before he read the page proofs of this present work of fiction. The boy had never taken note of the name of the author of the book. The title of the book comprised two words: a surname in the possessive case and the word Fag. The two words of the title were the only words from the book that the boy would remember, even a few years afterwards, but he would still remember, sixty and more years afterwards, some of what he had seen in his mind while he read and some of what he had felt. He would remember, for example, an image of a boy-man seated at a desk in an upstairs room that he called his study. The image-boy-man sometimes read from an image-book in which the image-words were in the Greek or the Latin language and sometimes wrote on an image-page with an image-pen image-lines of poetry or image-sentences of prose that he himself had composed just then in the one or the other language. The image-boy-man sometimes looked out through the image-window above his image-desk at an image-view of low green image-hills with a line of image-trees in the image-distance. The image-trees were the nearest image-trees of an image-woodland that extended a little way in among the image-hills. The image-boy-man admired the image-trees but had never wished to go alone into the image-woodland.

  The surname of the image-boy-man was part of the title of the book mentioned earlier, and the boy who had read the book several times always considered the image-boy-man the chief character of the book. Sixty and more years after he had last read the book, and when he better understood the workings of books of fiction, the man who had been the boy-reader understood that the chief character of the book was he who was denoted by the second word of the title. This character was an image-boy no older than the boy-reader himself had been while he was reading. The narrator of the book reported many of the images that appeared in the mind of this image-boy and many of his image-feelings but nothing of what took place in the mind of the image-boy-man who employed the chief character as his fag.