Confessions of a Yakuza – Junichi Saga

Describe it

A well-written biography of an old-school Yakuza, providing an unvarnished account of the underworld and the underclass in early 20th century Japan.

What I loved

A lot of history focuses on leaders or the elite, whose names are committed to the ages by circumstance, ability or privilege.   Confessions of a Yakuza provides a window into the lives of the other half: the poor, the outcasts and the criminals, who inhabit a world where the importance of guts and luck are less veiled, and where it is harder to hold illusions about human nature.

It is the biography of Ichiji Eiji, as told to a country doctor, Junichi Saga.  Eiji is not an overly complicated character: he is tough, amoral and self-serving.  He upholds a sense of yakuza honour, but mostly out of self-interest.  At the age he recounts his tale, he is unconflicted about his past and given to only occasional reflection.  He also has a weakness for woman, which, throughout his storied career, causes him to lop off a few fingers in penance, as per the yakuza code.

Indian Camp – Ernest Hemingway

Describe it

The first Nick Adams short story from In Our Time, in which Nick’s father, a doctor, takes him to an Indian camp to see a complicated birth.  Described by one critic as the “master key” to Hemingway’s writing.

What I loved

It all rings true.  One of my favourite Hemingway quotes from The Green Hills of Africa goes:

“First, there must be talent, much talent. Talent such as Kipling had. Then there must be discipline. The discipline of Flaubert. Then there must be the conception of what it can be and absolute conscience as unchanging as the standard meter in Paris, to prevent faking. Then the writer must be intelligent and disinterested and above all he must survive.”

Perhaps the most striking word in this quote is “disinterested”, which seems a strange trait to encourage in writers.  By this, I believe that Hemingway meant that a good writer must have the ability to take a step back and observe life, dispassionately, unblinkered by dogma or fear, never turning away from notions that society deems unacceptable.

In Indian Camp, Hemingway’s commitment to truthfulness can be seen in his exploration of masculinity, one of his chief preoccupations. 

Absolutely Crabb-ulous! – The political commentary of Annabel Crabb

Who she is

ABC’s chief online political writer. She is insightful, informed and frank, but her greatest asset is her wit, which makes the dry stuff of politics accessible and fun. Also brings her warmth and enthusiasm to TV on Insiders and The Drum.  Read her columns here.

What I love (feel the need to add “about her writing and commentary” before this gets creepy)

Her conversational style and bitingly funny, deadly-accurate pop-culture similes lay bare the absurdities, hypocrisies, challenges and, very occasionally, triumphs of the Australian Democratic system. On Julia Gillard:

“Where her predecessor ached to be popular, this prime minister has made unpopularity into something of a personal art form. There’s a compelling, almost cinematic quality to her determination; it’s like watching a slalom downhill skier deliberately hitting every peg.”

Tells it like it is. Keeps it real. Straight up OG (Observer of Government). Her style brings politics down a peg to a more engaging, honest level:

“that [the mining tax] did not apply to ordinary activity but only to the whoopingly, hilariously over-profitable kind, was not fully understood during the Mining Tax Massacre of 2010.”

And being such a clear communicator, one of her chief hates is obfuscation. As she puts it, “give me a clanger-dropper over a fudger any day.”

Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway [Round 2!]

Describe it

In its story of the idle, hedonistic elite, it expresses the anxieties of the modern age – the passing of the old world, the new roles of the sexes, and man’s loss of faith in God, in ideals, in himself. Read it.

What I loved

The spare beauty and vigour of Hemingway’s prose. The strength of an active sentence, the power of that perfect verb.

It made me want to dance and drink whisky in Paris, and fish and drink wine chilled in a mountain stream in the mountains of Spain, and see a bullfight and drink from a wine skin in Pamploma. To say damn this and damn that, and “What a lot of rot” and “To hell with you, Lady Ashley.”

Lord Jim – Joseph Conrad

Like all great classic literature, Lord Jim embodies the era in which it was written, while maintaining a timeless, human element.  Some things about it seem outdated: its initially slow pace, its paragraph structure, its debatable racism and colonialism.  But its main theme of romanticism, in all its undeniable attraction and destructiveness, is as relatable today as it would have been when the novel was first serialised over one hundred years ago.

From the novel’s opening chapter, all the major plot points are alluded to.  This establishes the novel’s tendency to tease the reader with the consequences before delving into the causes, an effective technique from both a narrative and thematic point of view.

When we meet him, the titular Jim, a young Englishman, is working as a water clerk, fleeing some ignominy, and destined for some ambiguous glory.  We are given some details of his background: he is the son of a parson whose head was filled with notions of adventure and distinction on the high seas following “a course of light holiday literature”. 

Candy – Luke Davies

There are lots of stories about drug addiction out there.  It’s a subject that will always attract readers because, while most people wouldn’t want to experience something like a heroin habit, many would want to understand why drug addicts find it so hard to give up.  It’s also a topic ripe for fictionalisation, with its ready made tension between addiction and rehabilitation, crime and punishment, as well as the constant threat of death lurking in the background.

But while there many books that tackle the same issue, I couldn’t imagine a more authentic depiction of heroin addiction than Luke Davies’ Candy.  Like the novel’s narrator, Davies had a smack habit for over a decade, and his hard won experience allows him to achieve a novel that is harrowing and poignant and overflowing with unmistakable truth.  In Candy, there is no of the glorification of a sex and drugs and rock’n’roll counter-culture, no breaking of taboos, none of the mad freedom of Hunter S. Thompson or Jack Kerouac. Just a steady descent into addiction that destroys the lives of two beautiful young people.

A Wild Sheep Chase – Haruki Murakami

A sheep with a star shaped mark on its back and possibly nefarious designs for the human race.  A girl with supernaturally dazzling ears and a sixth sense.  A dying right-wing power broker.  A narrator haunted by a whale’s penis.  A slurring dwarf in a sheep outfit.  What could they all have to do with each other?  Why, they’re all part of the plot of one of Haruki Murakami’s earliest novels, A Wild Sheep Chase.  Naturally.

Quarterly Essay 40: Trivial Pursuit – Leadership and the End of the Reform Era – George Megalogenis

I’ll say this upfront: George Megalogenis’s Quarterly Essay, Trivial Pursuit, is awesome.  Published at the end of last year, it is a response to the dismal 2010 Australian Federal election, which many political commentators labelled the worst election in Australian history due to the stage managed, petty politics employed by the leaders of the major parties, and the complete absence of meaningful policies.  The electorate became disengaged, with high numbers of informal votes recorded (Australia has compulsory voting, for those from overseas), while those in politics in the media were left asking, Where did Australian politics go so wrong?  Megalogenis (despite having a name that is very difficult to get right) offers up some answers.

The Master and Margarita – Mikhail Bulgakov

The Master and Margarita is a smart satire of Stalin’s Russia and a bold reinterpretation of Christian mythology, but what I loved most about it is its lush imaginativeness, its beautiful, dark images of an unhappy maidservant fleeing her former life on a flying pig, or Satan’s ball with its ape jazz band and crystal pool of wine, attended by histories greatest villains like Caligula, Messalina and, just for fun, polar bears.

Its plot can be summarised as: the devil pays a visit to Stalin’s Moscow.  It is written in the kind of tight, Russian prose that you find in Dostoevsky, but with a playfulness that sometimes has the author breaking the fourth wall, while the novel’s structure is, to put it bluntly, weird.

Green Hills of Africa – Ernest Hemingway

Green Hills of Africa has aged as gracefully as its diabetic, alcoholic, suicidal author did.  Firstly, it’s all about big game hunting: Hemingway and his wife and his mates tramp around Africa blowing away lions, rhinos, cheetahs and anything else that moves, presumably so the animal’s dismembered body parts can make a nice conversation piece in their living rooms.

Secondly, it’s all about manly men doing manly men things, with the only significant female character being Hemingway’s wife, Pauline Marie Pfeiffer, referred to as P.O.M. (don’t ask me to explain the acronym).  And while she is tenacious – tenacious enough, in fact, to make old Papa liken her to a “terrier”, which she understandably objects to – she is usually relegated to the role of cheer squad in Hemingway’s war against African Bambi’s mother.

And thirdly, Hemingway’s use of native trackers and porters to carry his trophies and eskies of beer has more than a whiff of colonialism and is the kind of unequal economic relationship that makes people very, very uncomfortable nowadays.

But to hell with all of that.  Green Hills of Africa proves that a good author can make any subject interesting, even one that you previously had an aversion to.  It’s also a memoir, meaning that it’s full of insights into man himself that Hemingway tragics like me can slaver over.