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milliemuroi's review
2.0
”Alan Close has been in love, and had sex. He lives in and around Sydney”
The quirky prelude to an anthology that adopts as it’s title; a forthright adage.
Close’s introductory remarks characterise the collection as a forum contributed to solely by men: a series of recollections and meditations on the modern sexual and romantic experience in a society that tacitly discourages men from open discussion of such topics. He promises an exploration of the shared but often silenced and a revelation of the unspoken - so I thought it about time I exercised some empathy and listened.
400 pages later I was ready to lay this book to rest. Whilst the beginning few texts were palatable, the writing was more often than not negligible (this is despite Close’s claim to having compiled the works of leading writers from Australia and New Zealand) and many of the accounts were neither engaging nor particularly enlightening. Perhaps this is just me at it again with my distaste for Winton-esque writing. Many of the pieces are reminiscent of The Turning and indeed Winton himself contributes a piece (I am sure I have read before) titled Neighbours.
A bit of a personal summary (/what I would have reduced the book down to):
We begin with Damien Lovelock’s The Ten Dollar Ticket and Steven Lang’s This is Our Secret (both good pieces) which reveal some of the secrecies which can shape one’s coming of age: A catholic school boy’s discovery of prostitution and one boy’s venture that coincides with molestation.
Near the beginning also, are Julian Davies’ In Praise of Eva: a somewhat unsettling but intriguing account of infatuation between a uni student and a mature-age woman, and William Yang’s Japan: an intercultural exploration of homosexuality and sexual media, both again decent texts.
We then have 300 pages or so of material which I wasn’t so impressed by, including David Owen’s idiosyncratic sci-fi(?) fantasy narrative called Lovelawn finally assuaged by the tail-piece of the compendium: Eric Rolls’ The Ultimate Act of Living which I found to be refreshing in its philosophical and scientific “David Attenborough” approach.
The dog-eared, yellowing pages and roughed-up cover tell me this is a book that has been picked up more than a few times, yet was it really worth the 400 pages? Probably not. But were there some things that one could take away from it? Possibly, yes.
The quirky prelude to an anthology that adopts as it’s title; a forthright adage.
Close’s introductory remarks characterise the collection as a forum contributed to solely by men: a series of recollections and meditations on the modern sexual and romantic experience in a society that tacitly discourages men from open discussion of such topics. He promises an exploration of the shared but often silenced and a revelation of the unspoken - so I thought it about time I exercised some empathy and listened.
400 pages later I was ready to lay this book to rest. Whilst the beginning few texts were palatable, the writing was more often than not negligible (this is despite Close’s claim to having compiled the works of leading writers from Australia and New Zealand) and many of the accounts were neither engaging nor particularly enlightening. Perhaps this is just me at it again with my distaste for Winton-esque writing. Many of the pieces are reminiscent of The Turning and indeed Winton himself contributes a piece (I am sure I have read before) titled Neighbours.
A bit of a personal summary (/what I would have reduced the book down to):
We begin with Damien Lovelock’s The Ten Dollar Ticket and Steven Lang’s This is Our Secret (both good pieces) which reveal some of the secrecies which can shape one’s coming of age: A catholic school boy’s discovery of prostitution and one boy’s venture that coincides with molestation.
Near the beginning also, are Julian Davies’ In Praise of Eva: a somewhat unsettling but intriguing account of infatuation between a uni student and a mature-age woman, and William Yang’s Japan: an intercultural exploration of homosexuality and sexual media, both again decent texts.
We then have 300 pages or so of material which I wasn’t so impressed by, including David Owen’s idiosyncratic sci-fi(?) fantasy narrative called Lovelawn finally assuaged by the tail-piece of the compendium: Eric Rolls’ The Ultimate Act of Living which I found to be refreshing in its philosophical and scientific “David Attenborough” approach.
The dog-eared, yellowing pages and roughed-up cover tell me this is a book that has been picked up more than a few times, yet was it really worth the 400 pages? Probably not. But were there some things that one could take away from it? Possibly, yes.
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