Gregory Day
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I remember some years ago staring intently for some time at a sculpture in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney and wondering if the sculptor was having a bit of lend of me. I couldn’t make head nor tail of what I was observing, and so I reluctantly decided to ask the nearby attendant what the artwork was all about.
It was truly a lightbulb moment because as the attendant spoke, the sculpture was in my mind transformed from a meaningless statue into something of significance that has stayed with me to this day. It was a good lesson to me about taking care when judging any work of art to not jump too quickly to judgment.
After reading a number of pages of this book I had convinced myself that I was going to dislike it, if not detest it. My initial impression was that it was a pretentious piece that had to be read with the regular aid of a dictionary and google.
It is not my practice to read other reviews of books before I write mine but, in this case, I felt compelled to do so because I knew that the author had been the recipient of several literary awards and I wanted to get the flavour of other views. Gregory Day has received the Patrick White Literary Award and was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award. As I read the early pages I began to wonder why I wasn’t enjoying the book. Why was I finding it irritating? Was I missing something?
Unfortunately, the first review that I happened to find on-line was one written for the Guardian Newspaper which said the following:
“The novel’s incantatory yet challenging prose make flaneurs of its readers, leading us down innumerable warrens of natural imagery and sinuous thought.”
And:
“…. authorial peregrinations on humankind-nature relations largely permeate the novel.”
And:
“The Bell of the World devotedly sews the fibral connections-as if a rhizomic root system or the branching filaments of mycelium-between humankind and the natural world, of which we are “both, both, both: both, both and Both again.” Some may recoil from Day’s effort…”
After reading that those words and not having a clue what the reviewer was talking about, I became more convinced that my initial impression was probably accurate and that I was one of those who would recoil, and recoil strongly, from Day’s efforts. I even wondered if I should bother continuing to read.
I am now glad that I did finish the book’s 405 pages, although it did take some time and effort.
As well as being a novelist, Day is also a poet, and the style of writing and his choice of language reflects this. In some ways the work is as much poetry as prose.
The tale begins in the early 20th Century with the central character, Sarah Hutchinson being shipped off to a rather posh girls’ school in England after her parents’ separation. There is no parental love in Sarah’s life with a drunken mother and absent father. At the school she is clearly a square peg in a round hole and really remains that throughout the whole book. However, Sarah is clearly a talented musician interested in all things artistic.
After finishing school, the plan is for Sarah to be sent to live with her gay uncle Ferny who lives on a bush property near the coastline south-west of Geelong, Victoria. The bush/sea mix is a significant symbol.
On the way home Sarah visits Uncle Ferny in Rome where she is exposed to the arts and culture of the city and to Ferny’s rather bohemian lifestyle and friends. In Rome Sarah loses her virginity to a painter by the name of Roiseaux, “a man old enough to be her grandfather.” Sarah is clearly craving for some affection, meaning and stability that her childhood has lacked.
On her return to Australia Sarah is unable to immediately head to Ferny’s property because he is still in Rome, so she spends a time of stability and renewal with Maisie, an indigenous woman. Maisie re-clothes Sarah which is clearly symbolism for much more than simply the changing of her outfit.
“She (Maisie) would dress her herself, if need be, strip her naked and reassemble her identity via Maisie’s own choice of clothes.”
The book is in two parts. The first part deals with Sarah as a young woman living on Uncle Ferny’s property. The setting for the second part of the book remains on the property but Ferny has died and Sarah has aged, and is corresponding about fungi with an American composer.
Sarah travels via train to Ferny’s property Ngangahook, where the rest of the narrative takes place.
The fly cover of the book explains:
“As Sarah’s world is nourished by music and poetry, Ferny’s life is marked by Such is Life, a book he has read and reread, so much so that the volume is falling apart. Its saviour is Jones the Bookbinder of Moolap, who performs a miraculous act. To shock and surprise, Jones interleaves Ferny’s volume with a book he bought from an American sailor, a once obscure tale of whales and the sea (Moby Dick). In art as in life nature seems supreme. Ngangahook and its environs are threatened, however, when members of the community ask the Hutchinsons to help ‘make a savage landscape sacred’ by financing the installation of a town bell. The fearless musician and her idealistic uncle refuse to buckle to local pressures, mounting their own defence of the ‘bell of the world.”
The prime mover behind the installation of the town bell is one Selwyn Atchison, a Bob Jelly type found in every town who sees progress as any development where nature is pushed aside. In Ferny’s eyes the sound of such a bell will overwhelm the natural world. Sarah is quoted as saying:
“That he considered Atchison a dolt and his desire for a bell a ruse for his own self-aggrandisement was self-evident enough to me.”
Ferny is quoted as saying:
“And to be honest, I’m not sure I want an hourly reminder of our local Christian hypocrisy penetrating deep into the redemptive rustling of the trees.”
The bell is therefore the symbol of the way that the expansion of “civilised society” has been destructive of both the natural world and First Nations communities.
The book is packed with metaphors and symbolism.
Symbols such as:
The skull of a dead lawyer which hangs in the room of Jones the Bookbinder.
The fact that Sarah has altered the sounds made by her grand piano by affixing natural objects such as gumnuts, leaves, parrot bone and pieces of kangaroo to the strings.
The binding together of the two books. One a story based on the land and the other a tale of the sea.
The killing of a tinker’s horse and the burning of his carriage.
Sarah’s correspondence with the American composer about fungi and in particular, the collared earthstar fungus.
The significance of the fact that the music performed at a concert that Sarah attends in Melbourne at the invitation of the American composer is that of early 20th century avant-garde composer Henry Cowell.
And more.
This book is not an easy read, and it will not be for everyone. It is like a complex piece of poetry with many layers of meaning which different readers will no doubt interpret in their own way. Like any good work of art, it needs some effort, but it is a work that will, if you persist, really make you think. The book is really an invitation to the reader to do just that. The penultimate page says this:
“To think, Sarah thought then, and to think again. And not for the first time. To think and think again, as a wallaby finds her truffle. To think, she thought…to think of all that can be unleashed. By doing nothing. By being.”
As I finished the last page, I had the feeling that I had barely scratched the surface of what Day was trying to say to me. It’s well worth a read or two or perhaps three, even if you often do need the aid of a dictionary and google.
John Watts