Googling old friends

A strange thing happened to me last night and I'm not sure what to do about it. I googled an old friend's name. Googling a face from the past isn't the strange thing - I've done this more times than I'd like to admit. (Almost as many times as I've googled my own name to see if some sneaky publisher has released my novel without telling me... Wait. Did I just say that out loud?) The strange thing is that I hadn't googled this particular friend before. I don't know why. She was my absolutely best of best friends in primary school. We even managed to maintain that friendship throughout Year 7 where philosophical differences and geography intervened, sending us to different schools in different suburbs across the city. Even then, for a while, we stuck it out.

And then time and age and adolescent uncertainty kicked in and suddenly the slow responses when I called, or the less frequent visits on weekends seemed to mean something had changed, or shifted anyway. Things we took for granted had to be felt out, considered, measured with care. The conversations a little forced, or stiff anyway. We saw each other more sporadically, less freely, and then that dropped off too. I don't know if it petered out or simply ceased overnight, but one day I just didn't see her anymore. For a while after that I thought about her a lot. And then I didn't. Life moved on. New friends came and went. We grew up, separately. Irreversibly.

The thing is, I adored her like only a young girl can. I think she felt the same about me, too. No one has ever made me laugh like she did. Nor loved the same things with the same passion and intensity. At the time it was KISS. We had every record, knew all the lyrics. We could draw each of the members' make-up in perfect imitation of the real thing, colours and all, and their outfits were imprinted on our memory way better than the 12 times' tables ever would be. We knew their wives' names, their dogs' names... We could sing the words backwards, literally, like some dwarf-loving David Lynch movie. We studied the lyrics for hidden meanings, transcribed them onto the page, moving them around, putting them back where they belonged. We belted out their songs at the top of our lungs, making up dances that would make Seinfeld's Elaine clap out loud. She called me "Nickski". I called her "Jubski". We made up our own language, quoting chunks from it in the schoolground with the arrogant fluency of Kevin Rudd addressing the Chinese parliament.

We rode our bikes down the newly developing Glen Waverley streets, scouting out hiding places amongst the scaffolding and house frames, wrote our names on the bitumen with chunks of chalky clay. We stalked the gorgeous curly-haired Year 8 boy we were crushing on with frightening intensity. She'd report the next day on new sightings after I'd gone home. While I'd wish we could live in the same house so I didn't have to miss out on these moments which I was certain were meant to be ours to share. Her dog came when I called him, her little brother hassled me like an annoying little brother should. Her mother baked my favourite dessert when she knew I was coming, and her dad would test his advertising pitches on us both. They included me in their lives as though I had as much right to be there as anyone with the same last name. Day after day. Week after week. Year after year.

And then it stopped. I can't say when exactly, and I don't know why. But it did. And I missed her. I like to hope she missed me too. Somewhere though I always thought we'd run into each other again. We still lived in the same suburb, despite the school change, and by rights, we should have seen each other all the time. We could have if we wanted to. Found a way to catch up, maintaining this friendship somehow, by correspondence, or on big occasions. We could have done that. Except we didn't. And then it ended, and suddenly my everything became my history, and no longer the centre of my life. Not part of my life at all.

So it's a strange thing that last night was the first time I ever tried to Google her. Her name is unique and unforgettable. There are not two of them, of that I'm sure. So to finally see her name online, all three bits, hyphenated like always - distinguishing her from the bland cream brick veneer of our childhood Glen Waverley - was something amazing.

And something shocking, too.

It didn't take long - a quick search and suddenly I was seeing her name in bold font. Large lettering, as clear as the words I write now. Front and centre, featured on a beautifully designed website that reminded me of a scrapbook, or a wedding album. It wasn't either of those things. It was a remembrance page.

It was the only mention I could find, the only reference with all three of her names. The only online evidence she ever lived was scrawled on a website dedicated to the dead. Slowly, as I scanned the pages, the tributes, the farewell messages, I began to accept that she had passed away. My best friend in the whole wide world that was my childhood died three years ago, and I didn't even know it. At the time, my heart did not skip a beat. I didn't feel the loss, or sense her absence. Nothing moved or ended. No moment of realisation or awareness. I didn't know, or notice, or see. I still wouldn't know if I hadn't been trying so hard not to write.

How is it possible that someone who is so intrinsic to your life, to how you breathe, think and feel, can pass through so easily into her own life, and then the afterlife, without even the tiniest of ripples in your own?

How is it possible my one-time best friend died and I didn't even realise?

I've spent much of today in a daze, not sure what to do with this information. Whether I have a right to do anything at all. I forget about it every now and then - just like I'd forgotten about her in those busy periods of my life when there was too much else for my mind to hold on to - and then it hits me like a wall. Hard and impenetrable. Impossible and unforgiving.

I'd like to tell her family I still miss her. I'd like to tell them she was amazing and special and unforgettable. I'd like to say all of this and more. Somehow though I know this won't happen. Shouldn't happen. It's not my place. Not my right. She isn't mine to grieve - I gave that privilege up a long time ago.

So now I have to find a place to keep her, a place of respect and love, alongside the other things I've lost that perhaps were never really mine to have anyway. Alongside my promise to sometimes, every now and then, just remember her. And to hope that my daughters find a friend like I had, even if just for a little while.

JWM - Rest in Peace.

Michael Sala's The Last Thread

The Last Thread
By Michael Sala
(Affirm Press)

Broken into two parts, Michael Sala’s The Last Thread tells the story of Michaelis (later, in an effort to fit in with his Australian home, Michael) and his family’s migration from The Netherlands to Australia, from Australia to The Netherlands, and back to Australia again. Largely autobiographical, it depicts his early years as the younger and, in his mind, less favoured of two brothers and their complicated relationship with their frustratingly inept mother. Detailing the years with a cruel and bullying stepfather, through the difficult terrain of family scandal surrounding their separation from an enigmatic father, and their mother’s frequently terrible choices in love and life, The Last Thread is at times both beautiful and poignant, if a little uneven.

The first section largely follows the chronology of events and is, I believe, the more successful part. Told in the subjective third person from the young Michaelis’s point-of-view, it weaves in and out of the lives of his family, which, much like the narrative, is in perpetual motion, staying still only long enough for Michaelis — and the reader — to begin to feel like he might have found a home. Each of these upheavals is driven by his complex and difficult mother’s search for happiness. Of course, this sort of search for happiness is futile and painful. The answers his mother seeks don’t exist outside herself and have nothing — or little — to do with geography, although the rendering of the Australian landscape in the 1970s through the eyes of a foreigner certainly paints a bleak and confronting picture of just how hostile and unforgiving it could be. (And perhaps - given the Cronulla riots, our treatment of asylum seekers and Indigenous Australia - still is.) While the family’s fate is driven by the mother’s pursuit of the impossible, the story is focussed on how Michaelis adjusts to these sudden and often shocking upheavals, without ever satisfactorily exploring the emotional toll these decisions have on the young and lonely boy, except in the pervasive sense of disconnection - from everything. The disconnect between the characters and their emotions echoes the disconnect this reader felt with Michaelis himself. Whether by accident or design, like Michaelis, the reader must also keep up with these jarring shifts, forced to reconnect the emotional fractures that characterise all of Michaelis’ relationships. To fill in the gaps. The effect is both compelling and frustrating.

The second part of the novel is told in first person, in the voice of Michael as the man he is today: a father and partner struggling to relinquish the tentacles of his torrid and fraught history. This section moves back and forth through Michael’s memories and his present day to varying success, with the added effect of bringing another dimension to the character, while still rendering him largely unknowable. It is as though by luring the reader to a point where we feel we’re just getting to know and understand this man/boy, we are abruptly delivered somewhere else, restricting us from the access we desire. Much as Michael/Michaelis is by his mother’s restless search for a place that feels like a home.

The backcover blurb tells us that “Michael — now a father — must decide if he can free himself from the dark pull of the past”, however, this is not where we find ourselves in the end. Rather, Michael — and the reader — are left grappling with the man he’s become, a man still bound by the suffocating fears and injustices that plagued his childhood years.

Overall, The Last Thread is rich and beautifully drawn but also, ultimately, vaguely unsatisfying. I suspect that the “truth” of this roman a clef is perhaps the very thing that limits its possibilities. I wonder why Sala chose to fictionalise at all when he seemed attached to a “true” or real ending that leaves us with more questions than answers. Just as Michaelis/Michael is a work in progress, The Last Thread felt a bit like an unfinished manuscript too. Having said that, there is much to enjoy in this novel, and I’m keen to read more of Sala’s fiction. My hope is that, next time, this talented and exciting new writer frees himself to move further from the autobiographical into the fictional where, I’m certain, breathtaking fiction awaits.

Back from Hiatus

Is it possible that the last post I made was in May? That the last book I reviewed was eight months ago? Oh, say it ain't so.

For reference, in that time I've completed a novel and sent it off into the loving arms of my tireless agent and am now awaiting word from publishers. In the meantime, I am NOT checking my email hourly, turning my phone on and off to make sure it's working, OR sending said agent inane tidbits about the latest book I read, or a cool new washing product (that really works!), just to remind her I exist.

I'm not, I tell you. I'm. Not.

What I am doing is trying to decide what to write next. Right now, the answer is hovering somewhere between something similar but a bit different to what I've just finished and resurrecting my longheld desire to join the circus.

As you can see, I'm making excellent progress.

So while I draw ever closer to determining the meaning of life, I have some books I want to review cluttering my bedside table, and better I empty them here than continually harangue my agent. At least, that's what she says.

Still with me?

I'll be back with the first of these soon. In the meantime, follow me on Twitter (@nichmelbourne) which is all that's stopping me from parking outside every publisher in Australia, brandishing my 300 page manuscript like a sword.

Nic

Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels

I have this thing I do, when there are gaps between books I’ve been wanting to read, where I go back to novels I’d dismissed despite critical applause. My inner literary snob wants to believe that any quality novel can sustain my attention, even if it deals with a subject I’m not interested in. Or am sick of. Or simply cannot bear to delve into for various reasons — perceived bleakness, ungodly length (Freedom, anyone?*), or because the author has taken a shortcut to fame (James “It’s a true story!” Frey).

World War II novels have fallen into my growing pile of neglected brilliance for no better reason than I’ve read a lot of them. It seemed my entire HSC English literature booklist was comprised of WWII books, both fiction and memoir, and although a decade — (cough) or two — has passed, the memories still haunt. I’d begun to feel that there was really nothing to say about Nazi atrocities, Jewish escape narratives, or London bombings that hadn’t already been said, and very eloquently for the most part. (Apparently Australia was also in the Second World War, although no one told the Year 12 English curriculum coordinator.) So I opened Anne Michaels’ Fugitive Pieces (1996) with some trepidation — even the title suggested another bleak account of hatred and cruelty, followed by loss and displacement, culminating in stoic survival. The requisite arc for survival stories.

And then I read it.

Fugitive Pieces is written in two parts: Book 1 and Book 2. It opens with the fictional account of Jewish poet Jakob Beer who, as a young boy, escapes the horror of his parents’ killing in a village in Poland, by running through the dark forest at night and burying himself in the dirt to avoid detection during the day. The horrific but gripping depiction of his escape is over quickly however, as it primarily serves to set up the encounter that shapes the novel: the loving relationship between the boy and his rescuer.

“No one is born just once” Jakob tells us, in a novel that takes rebirth as its theme — even as it focuses on what we find under the ground. There is Jakob’s earthen burial, the dark, filthy hiding place from which he emerged to be rescued by the Greek geologist and humanist Athos Roussos, who wonders if this apparition were one of “Biskupin’s lost souls”. Athos is on an archeological dig when he sees this filthy boy, and takes the strange and courageous step of helping him escape, and giving him a new life.

“Lost soul” doesn’t touch the edges of the depths of the protagonist of this story. Jakob is both lost and beautiful, fragile and resilient, nurtured to health and a fragile peace in the capable arms of the loving father-figure, Athos. The story that unfolds as Athos takes Jakob to a Greek island to hide and, eventually, Toronto to migrate, is one of enduring love and the power of human connection to rekindle the spirit and renew life and hope. Michaels’ novel tells us that we are not complete as beings until we have loved, and been loved. That through this love, we can find rebirth.

A man of enormous wisdom, Athos gives the haunted Jakob another life, another language — two languages, in the end — and with this, a sense of history and humanity. Travelling across continents, struggling to find food, shelter and a place to call home, all the while grappling with having left his beautiful older sister to an unknown fate when he escaped, Jakob remains an almost mystical spirit, somehow separate and removed from the world around him, except in the stories and wisdom imparted by Athos. And in the lasting friendships this man brings to him.

After Athos’s death, having anchored his soul in the warmth of his mentor, Jakob turns to Athos’s words and history to escape his grief. He posthumously publishes Athos’s notes rejecting the Nazis’ falsification of history, in a book called, Bearing False Witness, and believes, for a time, that he's found love with Alex who he too quickly marries. But his darkness persists and the marriage ends, thrusting Jakob back into the search for understanding and peace in language, literature and scholarship. Saved by a friendship with a local family, Jakob is introduced to Michaela and, together, they return to Athos’s family home in Greece, complete and content, and finally at peace.

The second part of this novel deals with Ben, a Toronto-based professor who has grown up with parents haunted by the Holocaust, to the point that they seem unable to connect with him in the same way that they can connect with his wife, Naomi. Unable — or unwilling — to stop this from driving a wedge between himself and Naomi, Ben seeks out solace in separation, leaving his wife in his search for Jakob Beer’s lost journals. Ben had met Jakob before he died, and uses this quest as a means to avoid his damaged relationship with his parents, and his anger with his wife.

For a short time, this second section became an unwanted distraction from what I thought was the real story. I was completely caught up in Jakob’s life and quest for peace, and felt deflated and lost, initially, when I realised that his story, ostensibly, was over. I persisted, though, and gradually grew to care about Ben, who manages a difficult but eventual resolution to his own damaged soul, largely as a result of the truths he found in Jakob’s experience.

Michaels’ language is exquisite. The evidence of her poetry is as clear in the deft imagery in her sentences as in their brevity. Beautiful and simple, she waves an almost mystical sheen across the places and people who inhabit this novel, without ever compromising their inherent warmth. Graphic and grim in places, somehow even the most horrible scenes have a majesty about them as examples of humanity, both good and evil. She describes the Greek village, Kalavrita, following the German invasion, accordingly: “In the valley, charred ruins, blackened stone, a terrible silence. A place so empty it was not even haunted.” And Toronto: “A city of forsaken worlds; language a kind of farewell.” And in perhaps the most poignant observation, the universal experience of grief and loss is eloquently rendered thus: “The grief we carry, anybody’s grief, is exactly the weight of a sleeping child.”

Anne Michaels is a poet, literally and figuratively, but unlike much of the poetry that seems to monopolise contemporary poetry pages (wherever they’re hiding), Michaels’ language never loses site of humanity, warmth, and the exquisite complexity of the human condition.



* Two things: 1. I’ve now read Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom . 2. I am not opposed to the notion of a long book. Having said that, when I have to lug the bloody thing in a backpack already weighed down by manuscripts and endless parent crap, it reminds me, and I’ll remind you... Size does matter.

The Poetry of Eddie Vedder

It’s a strange thing that whenever I confess my admiration — OK adoration — for Pearl Jam, it’s often met with a blank stare. Which is interesting enough, given the band’s profile, but more surprising is that sometimes I get the eye roll. When I query said eye-roller, they often can’t name a single song. Or they can name a song, but only from Pearl Jam's first album, and usually “Jeremy”. Either way, it’s an opinion drawn on little, if any, actual familiarity with their music.

(OK. I have no doubt there are people who hate Pearl Jam having given them a fair and reasonable hearing. I just haven’t met them, m’kay?)

The lack of familiarity comes from the fact that Pearl Jam do not benefit from regular airplay on commercial radio, nor do they have a string of memorable video clips on 24-hour rotation on Rage. (It’s probably called something else now. So I’m old. Sue me.) In fact, Pearl Jam have released only a handful of video clips, apart from those drawn from live shows, MTV unplugged performances, or the multiple bootleg YouTube offerings. Adding to their lack of broadcast opportunities, for a decade they eschewed the conglomerate Ticketmaster, using their own outlets and pioneering online ticket sales to distribute concert tickets to their loyal fans, in the process successfully keeping ticket prices comparable to the cost of a paperback novel but also, conversely, limiting the stadiums and venues where they could play. In theory they wanted to let their music sell itself. According to Rolling Stone, however, they seemed to have spent a lot of time “deliberately tearing apart their own fame.”

Quite successfully, my informal surveys suggest.

Musical taste is an incredibly subjective thing. One that often defies explanation, reason and logic. So I will not waste a moment trying to convince anyone here of Pearl Jam’s musical worth. You can click on the links and decide for yourself. (Or look at the impressive list of their collaborators, musical awards, number of fans, and body of work...OK. Couldn’t resist entirely.)

What I will do, though, is tell you why anyone who reads, writes, or appreciates language is missing out on some of the best poetry of my own fading generation. (The Xers, for those who haven’t caught up.) The reason they’re adored by so many and continue to sell out whenever they tour is because people — myself included — want to hear what Eddie Vedder has to say. As the lead singer and main lyricist, he is the driving force behind this band. But more than this, his lyrics transform an eclectic, grungey array of musical expression into something almost transcendental — a quality taken even further by his solo catalogue.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here. Let’s give Eddie the pen for a moment.

What I’d like to do is just copy slabs of his lyrics and let him speak for himself. This, however, most likely breaches all kinds of copyright — quite apart from being all kinds of lazy. So what I’ll do instead is highlight selected extracts from his catalogue that I think best expresses why we — Pearl Jam and Eddie Vedder fans alike — hang off his every word.

Perhaps the best place to start is with Pearl Jam’s first single — one of only a handful they’ve released over the years. (Yet another example of their anti-marketing strategy.)

“Alive” tells the story of a teenaged boy whose mother tells him that his father is actually his stepfather, and that his real father died.

“Son,” she said, “have I got a little story for you
What you thought was your daddy was nothing but a...
While you were sitting home alone at age thirteen
Your real daddy was dying.
Sorry you didn’t see him, but I’m glad we talked...”

Grim, shocking, and worse, in the next verse hinting at incest, this was eventually revealed to be autobiographical. Part of a trilogy that Vedder calls a “mini-opera” entitled Mama-san, it tells the story of a teenaged boy who has been lied to and betrayed by his mother to the point where he does not know what he’ll do next. But ends, initially, with the almost pleading declaration that he is “still alive”.

Then the story builds to a terrible crescendo in “Once”, part two of the trilogy:

Backseat lover on the side of the road
I got a bomb in my temple that is gonna explode
I got a sixteen gauge buried under my clothes, I play...

Once upon a time I could CONTROL myself
Ooh, once upon a time I could LOSE myself, yeah...

And culminates in “Footsteps” in which the youth having gone out on a shooting spree now awaits his death sentence:

Don't even think about gettin' inside
Voices in my head, voices
I got scratches, all over my arms
One for each day, since I fell apart

I did, what I had to do
If there was a reason, it was you...

Still blaming his mother for what happened to him:

Footsteps in the hall, it was you, you
Pictures on my chest, it was you, you

“Footsteps” eerily pre-empts “Jeremy” which details a high school massacre, arguably the song most frequently cited as a reason to dislike Pearl Jam. It is also, in my opinion, one of their least interesting. Despite this, it is the song that gets most frequent radio play and is one of the only video clips they’ve made. (A clip that Vedder has since admitted he regrets agreeing to.)

Ten was the start of the Pearl Jam story and, admittedly, the harshest of all the albums, lyrically speaking. It’s also, ironically, still their best album musically. Although there are better individual songs, each song from Ten is potentially a single in its own right. If they were into that, of course.

Since then, Vedder has moved away from this focus on difficult childhoods and fractured family life, covering everything from the political “Bu$hleaguer”

like sugar, the guests are so refined

to pithy social commentary:

It’s a mystery to me
we have a greed
with which we have agreed.

Vedder turns desire into a complicated battle:

The waiting drove me mad...
you're finally here and I'm a mess
I take your entrance back...
can't let you roam inside my head (“Corduroy”)

and transforms loss into something tangible:

Sheets of empty canvas, untouched sheets of clay
Were laid spread out before me as her body once did. (“Black”)

(Incidentally, “Black” was one of the first songs that forced me to listen beyond the music — to study the lyrics and wonder about the man behind them. Something about the next line grabbed me and changed how I listened to Pearl Jam forever: “And all I taught her was ... everything.”)

He ranges from stinging self-actualisation:

I did, what I had to do
And if there was a reason
Oh, there wasn't no reason, no
And if, there's something you'd like to do
Just let me continue, to blame you. (“Footsteps”)

To quiet self-determination:

Me, I figure as each breath goes by
I only own my mind. (“I am Mine”)

He is cynical about religion and the hypocracies committed by followers —

The selfish, they’re all standing in line
Faithing and hoping to buy themselves time... (“I am Mine”)

and yet has written an almost Messianic ode to the power of belief in “Given to Fly” :

Alone in a corridor, waiting, locked out
He got up outta there, ran for hundreds of miles
He made it to the ocean, had a smoke in a tree
The wind rose up, set him down on his knee

A wave came crashing like a fist to the jaw
Delivered him wings, "Hey, look at me now"

While both Vedder and Pearl Jam deny the Christian overtones — Vedder is an aetheist — there is blatant referencing of the Christ story:

He floated back down 'cause he wanted to share
His key to the locks on the chains
he saw everywhere
But first he was stripped
and then he was stabbed
By faceless men — well, fuckers
He still stands

Again, Vedder returns to the defiant advocacy of love, couched in anger and frustration, granted, but still, ultimately, a declaration that love is what makes us human, and allows us to soar:

And he still gives his love,
he just gives it away
The love he receives is the love that is saved
And sometimes is seen a strange spot in the sky
A human being that was given to fly...

It is surprisingly sentimental and decidedly lacking in cynicism. It is also very powerful as a consequence.

The simple wisdom of some of his lines requires no explanation —

And the young, they can lose hope
cause they can't see beyond today,...
The wisdom that the old can't give away... ...

Sometimes life
Don't leave you alone. (“Love Boat Captain”)

and yet so often these simple wisdoms aren't given the respect they deserve, or not in any meaningful way:

Sorrow grows bigger when the sorrow’s denied. (“I am Mine”)

In his grammy winning solo album for the Sean Penn film, Into the Wild, Vedder so artfully slots himself into the headspace of the story’s protagonist, Christopher McCandless — top athlete and college graduate who sells everything he owns to disappear into the Alaskan wilderness — that the film almost didn’t need dialogue, so clear was the narrative across Vedder’s lyrics.

The story is synopsised in Vedder’s Oscar-nominated song, “Guaranteed”:

Wind in my hair, I feel part of everywhere
Underneath my being is a road that disappeared
Late at night I hear the trees,
they’re singing with the dead
Overhead...

If you've seen the film, you’ll understand all the extra layers to this verse. But even without seeing it, Candless’ mixture of innocence and naivety, underlined by an unfulfilled desire to understand something bigger than the “normal” society he was expected to enter before he took off “into the wild”, is sweetly rendered by Vedder:

A mind full of questions,
and a teacher in my soul

and

I’ve got my indignation,
but I’m pure in all my thoughts
I’m alive...

as well as recognising Candless’ genuine feelings of remorse for having hurt the ones he loved by leaving, as well as his attempts to ease any feelings of guilt they might have:

If ever the was someone to keep me at home
It would be you...

Vedder understands the frustrations of youth, even now, at the ripe old age of 47. The cynicism is there, as is the sharp and witty social commentary — very rock-and-roll and very “alternative” (if there is such a thing anymore) — but what tempers Vedder’s stories — for they are all stories — is the persistent underlying theme that manages to force its way to the surface, if not in every song, then across each album, and certainly throughout his career...

That is, love.

Love is all you need. All you need is love.

The haunting "Black", already cited, gives us one of my favourite declarations of love:

I know someday you'll have a beautiful life,
I know you'll be a sun in somebody else's sky, but why
Why, why can't it be, can't it be mine?

In "Love Boat Captain", a song written in response to a fan’s request in the aftermath of a tragedy that almost forced Pearl Jam to disband, Vedder reminds us simply in this un-ironic quotation:

It's already been sung,
but it can't be said enough
All you need... ... is love

The incident that triggered the band’s crisis occurred at the Roskilde Festival in Denmark. During Pearl Jam’s act, the crowd surged dangerously toward the stage. In the crush, nine young fans (all men) were trampled to death, largely unseen by the other fans or the performers. On stage, Vedder had repeatedly pleaded with fans to move back, but it was only later, some way into their act, that they discovered what had happened. They cancelled the performance and left the stage. The festival continued without them, although no other acts appeared on that particular stage.

Vedder references the incident directly in “Love Boat Captain”:

Lost nine friends will never know,
two years ago today...

But it is in the question these deaths poses immediately after that we get to the heart of it:

...and if our lives become too long,
will it add to our regret?

The question suggests that this level of loss is never finished, never closed. That time doesn't make it any easier, just longer. During live performances, Vedder changes the lyrics from “two years ago today” to reflect the actual time passed — a poignant reminder that while life goes on, the families’ suffering is a continuum. As is the band’s. (Several of the band members, including Vedder, have remained in contact with the families of the nine dead men.)

Perhaps this is the greatest irony surrounding people’s misconceptions about Pearl Jam. Considered to be grunge and therefore somehow cynical, bitter, and angry, in truth, more recently, and perhaps all along, love shapes Vedder’s music. It is the question he most consistently asks and tries to answer, and the only consolation he willingly offers up when nothing else makes sense.

Once you hold the hand of love...
it's all surmountable. (”Love Boat Captain”)

The opposite of cynical, Vedder’s faith in love is the source of the most eloquent and original contributions to the genre, and, yes, I'll say it: the generation. Even when referencing his angry youth — the angry youth, more broadly — there is a hopefulness and optimism pervading everything he writes. Even if he wasn’t a recipient of it as a young man, he knew it was what he needed. What we all need. And he seems to have found it as an adult.

This is the opposite of the nihilistic ranting too readily associated with grunge music by its critics, and too frequently cited as the reference point for Pearl Jam detractors. Vedder unashamedly advocates the purest but most complicated of all desires in the simplest form possible. It’s all about love. The need to give it and receive it.

Enough from me, though. I’ll give Eddie the final word:

Hold me, and make it the truth,...
That when all is lost there will be you.
’Cause to the universe I don't mean a thing
And there's just one word that I still believe and it's
Love,... love. love. love. love.

What's coming up...

Will get back to you re info regarding a new project I'm working on. I'm putting together a list of interviews with local and overseas authors and hope to start this new series in the next couple of weeks. Also have some reviews coming up - some new books and a few oldies.

Reason # 155 for avoiding my thesis...

...too many books to read, for a start.

Anyone else feel overwhelmed the moment they walk into a bookshop - liquidation and bankruptcy issues aside? The sheer volume of books there are to read has the double whammy of 1) reminding me that the world doesn't need another author (me, for example), and 2) making it impossible to choose one out of the million possibilities on offer.

There are whole genres I barely consider, let alone buy, and whole departments (self-help, I'm looking at you) in which I've never deigned to set foot. (I don't think I have. I actually don't know where that section is. So if you see me hovering near one, understand I am almost certainly lost.)

And then there are the books I already have - the ones that scream for my attention in a way that Cute American Husband has no hope of managing. Some of them are reputed to pertain to my research, but they're so tired and dusty looking that I struggle to read their titles, let alone their contents. Most of them, however, come in the form of distraction - from my children, my work, and most of all, my thesis. (From here on in to be known as The Beast.)

Most intimidating of all is the Dreaded Bedside Pile. The tower of knowledge and words that grows almost daily, never shrinking, despite the efforts of Father Gravity, the laws of logic, and my relentless desire to "get on top of things". (No chuckling in the back row, thank you.)

Still, you can't question my commitment to this pile, comprised of a mix of borrowed books, newly bought books, library books and old favourites awaiting a second (third, fourth, twentieth) read. (See this for specifics.) There are books I've begun but can't finish, nor can I give up on them confidently enough to re-shelve for another time. There are books I feel like I should read but don't want to, have read but can't remember, and won't read but have promised I will. You see, in my unique style of reasoning, as long as the book remains by my bed, there is some hope I'll get to it as promised, some day, eventually, and so it isn't a lie so much as a not-yet-fulfilled promise. (Yes, there's a difference.)

Quite apart from the Dreaded Bedside Pile are the various manuscripts of unpublished novels cowering on my hard-drive, weighed down by a promise of feedback, encouragement, support and/or editing - all shouting at me to be read the moment I fire up my computer.

So you can see why I'm behind on The Beast: all those books, with no time to read them. Sometimes it's difficult to remember that this reading business is fun. Sometimes it feels like hard work, and then I stumble upon a story that pulls me in so completely that I wish I didn't have to waste time eating, sleeping and washing. And I remember suddenly why I love reading.

Right now I'm halfway through the latest novel by Jon Clinch, author of the beautiful but harrowing Finn, whose new book, Kings of the Earth, has been listed among the outside shots at a Pulitzer.

It's always a cool thing when you knew the author before they were published, seeing the years of rejection end with a bang the way Jon's career did. It's even better when their second book lives up to the promise of their remarkable debut. I intend to post my review next week, so won't impart further details here, but if it continues at anything like the quality it's begun, be prepared for the kinds of superlatives I've saved for my favourites. Already it's the kind of novel you want to devour, and then re-read, slowly, carefully, to savour the language. The characters are distinct, believable, and eloquent, their voices as clear as a bellbird's song. So I'm taking my time with this one, almost despite myself, knowing that the towering pile will not allow me a second bite at this cherry for some time to come.

In the meantime, for those Australian readers who are tempted to give Kings of the Earth a shot, I'm afraid it's been deemed "too American" by local publishers, and so you can only buy it online or overseas.

I can only assume that local publishers haven't actually read it yet, because the novel I'm reading is as universal as the idea of storytelling itself. And, from the perspective of an aspiring author, as intimidating and as towering as the Dreaded Bedside Pile and my beastly thesis combined.