Under the Sun (50 page)

Ubeda | Andalucia | Spain | 2 July 1984

 

A crowd of small boys have clustered round my windsurfer – on the roof-rack. Recklessly – and with an American Ex card I bought a most elegant and speedy model. When I tried it out, of course, I fell off again and again. I have a ridiculous new book in hand – which has grown ORGANICALLY out of an article. As always B

Apartado 73 | Ronda | Malaga | Spain | 23 July 1984

 

Am stiff and back-biting after 3 months of writing rubbish. But I did buy a windsurfer. Thinking of you often and long to be back. Much love B

Flat 7 | 77 Eaton Place | London | 31 July 1984

 

Dear Murray,

I am reunited with my post after 5 months: so you can imagine the state I'm in. Fine. You can use the flat from August 23rd for two weeks. I'll be around but can spend my odd nights in London with friends: but nearly all the time, flat out writing (I hope) about an hour away in the country. All going very badly! I hate all this business of writers doing places – or doing them in – and wouldn't dream of doing the same for Australia. Hence my problems, but I won't bore you with them.

The Cézanne watercolours are at St George's Gallery.
⁶⁴⁹
Call me the moment your plans firm up, so I can get you the keys etc.

In haste, Bruce

Flat 7 | 77 Eaton Place | London | [August 1984]

 

Dearest Elisabeth,

Enclosed 55 pages of this ‘experiment'. There are many more, but in a chaotic condition, since this is like the jig-saw puzzle you despair of finishing.

The ‘
middle
' of the book, if it has one, is a revelation that, in the case of Swartkrans, the killer of the hominids was not any old
beast
: but a
specialist
predator who it appears preferred
our
kind to the exclusion of almost all other flesh. The coda examines the implication of the fact that at the particular moment in palaeontological history, when our intelligence suddenly appears with a Bang, there was a Beast with whom we were locked in a 1:1 relationship. All very speculative, I admit, but nonetheless arresting!

Love,

Bruce

 

P.S. I am now intent on getting the thing onto paper first – and then checking and ‘Englishing' it backwards. Call you next week.

Flat 7 | 77 Eaton Place | London | 1 November 1984

 

My dearest Nin,

Sorry if our correspondence has gone a bit astray. I've been in the thick of it, beavering away on the book: by the end of the day it's as much as I can do to sign a cheque, let alone write. And what a monstrosity it is! About monsters, no less! But touch wood, over the last few days I reached a watershed, and can, I believe, see light at the end of the tunnel. The real cause of my distraction was the annual visit to London by my American publisher, Elisabeth Sifton, who has almost become my alter ego when it comes to books. She was wonderful: not only did she take the point, entirely: she also provided the wherewithal to continue – which considering the extremely cranky viewpoint was, to say the least, encouraging.

Alas, I can't see my way to coming out again this winter (ours). Who knows, another month of this dripping cold climate and I may change my mind utterly. It is after all possible these days to hop on a plane. But on balance I think I'd better try and slog it out. The only date I have in mind is Midsummer's Day in Finland at something called the Lahti Festival. By that time all being well, I'll have cleared the decks for my so-called ‘Russian' project
⁶⁵⁰
– though, I have to say, I'm having second thoughts about beginning that at once. Wouldn't it be better, I ask myself, taking a real
wanderjahre
, my head empty of grandiose (and? unattainable projects), just to roam around and write short stories. Anyway to Finland I shall go, but what I wondered is whether that coincided with – or around – your plans for Moscow.

Many thanks for the clipping. I never read S[alman] R[ushdie]'s
Tatler
article
⁶⁵¹
because I had a feeling it might make me mad – and wouldn't it just? Silly arse! It's one thing to go knocking Australia if you're paid to do it by an American publisher – as I believe Shiva Naipaul
⁶⁵²
is doing – quite another when you're invited by the city, given that degree of attention, even adulation – and then what? He got it all from a rather painted-up, ogle-eyed and not-to-my-mind-so beautiful literature-groupie who went the rounds, it seems, of every writer at the festival before latching onto him. How silly can you be? The Mayor, in my view, was dead right. But then I do believe he's gone a bit barmy recently. He left his wife for my friend the ‘camel lady' Robyn Davidson
⁶⁵³
– all my fault – or so I was told! – but now he's back again in London, full of the ‘weirdness' of Australia. Frankly, I find the ‘weirdness' of Mrs Thatcher's Britain quite enough to contend with without adding to the list. And it is strange to find myself, as a Pom, becoming more and more patriotic and defensive about Australia – thank God I wasn't so thunderstruck on my first visit – but now I see the whole thing in better perspective, I'm secretly tempted to up-sticks and move there.

I feel for you desperately about Geoff [Dutton] – but from what Tisi
⁶⁵⁴
said, I too did think it sounded – for all those reasons we discussed – as though he was going to stay. The awful thing was that I lost his letter (together with a whole lot of others!) – and although I tried to answer his questions about Afghanistan, I'm afraid it must have sounded a little limp-wristed. I haven't heard from him since.

My friend Murray Bail was here – a really good egg! We had the liveliest time together. It's funny to see how well his ‘art-historical' biography of Fairweather
⁶⁵⁵
comes off in relation to David Malouf's novel
⁶⁵⁶
of the same theme.

We'll write again before the month's out. Otherwise slog. But I
did
have a
week
's break to go to a writer's conference in Barcelona and find myself in the same platform as my No 1 hero: Andrei Sinyavsky
⁶⁵⁷
. Not very approachable, I'm afraid, for though he spoke perfectly good French – and rattled along when his wife was not looking – she caught us and said bleakly through the interpreter in Russian: ‘
We
have spoken enough French for today.'

Much love Bruce

PS Came back 10 days after writing this to find that the people in the house had
not
posted it. In the meantime I did read S[alman] R[ushdie]'s notorious
Tatler
article. The man is off his head! How dare he when I introduced him to Mrs Mykyta, make flip comments on that murder(s)!

Elizabeth got back this afternoon from Delhi of all places and is a bit shattered xx B

Flat 7 | 77 Eaton Place | London | [November 1984]

 

My dear Murray,

I've been wondering how you've got on since the Sudanese abortion.
⁶⁵⁸
I keep on kicking myself for not being
firmer
at that dinner: but the
Morning Herald
's letter looked so imposing, so irrefutable. Anyhow, I hope that Harare was at least something. I also felt we should have made some grand expedition in England. But you know how it is. I am usually so desperate to get the hell out of here that any moment for work is precious. The book grinds on slowly. I thought I was on top of it – that is until I began to re-read some, at which point I realised ‘This will never do'. The American publisher liked what I had done – or so she said – but, out of sheer terror, I'm going to refuse the advance offered for fear of being stuck.

Salman, as you know, is back. What a drama! I'm a little bit cross with him for sounding off against the Adelaide Festival . . . Adelaide as an ideal location for a murder movie etc. A friend from Sydney also sent me Shiva Naipaul's embittered rant from one of your magazines.
⁶⁵⁹
All seems to me to be so pointless. I suspect that there's quite a market in the US for writers who will tell the Americans that Australia is not quite so great after all. Anyway, I, as a Pom, have moved into a high Pro-Australia-patriotic phase, and won't hear one word against it.

The other night, with the wind howling round this promenade-deckof-the-Queen-Mary house of ours, I read
Ian Fairweather
from cover to cover. Absolutely AI. I haven't read so enjoyable an ‘Art Book' (which it isn't) ever. What I never took in was how the later ‘Chinese' pictures were all ‘remembrances of Cathay.' What a figure!
⁶⁶⁰
And what a destiny! In your hands he's totally alive – whereas the artist in
Harland's Half Acre
just isn't convincing. Why don't you turn your hand to Cézanne? Jon Rewald
⁶⁶¹
is, of course, the expert; but he's a basically unimaginative man, and I reckon you could arrive at the ‘texture' of Cézanne better than anyone. Anyway, it's only an idea.

Elizabeth has been in India for a couple of months. She got away from Delhi the night before the assassination,
⁶⁶²
and managed to miss the real rumpus: all the same, she's pretty whacked.

All my love to Margaret and yourself,

Bruce

Flat 7 | 77 Eaton Place | London | 8 November 1984

 

Lovely to get your letter as always. Here the same old grind. Mirella Ricciardi
⁶⁶³
sent me to see ‘Green Ants Dreaming' in a totally empty movie house in Chelsea. Really, my new friend W[erner Herzog] was really off his head. The script, when I saw it, was a warning. Anyhow, well out of that one. Much love to all. Ranald
⁶⁶⁴
here delighting us all.

Flat 7 | 77 Eaton Place | London | 12 November 1984

 

Something terrible happened. Your letter – which I had in a mountain of mail – got lost between here and the country:
⁶⁶⁵
together with a stack of others. Inexplicable! The winter draws in here. The proverbial English gloom – and I am trying to write of the blinding light of Central Australia, for which already I ache. I'm fed up with being a soi-disant ‘writer'. It's my experience that the moment one starts being a writer, everything dries up. I think of you often. Much love Bruce

as from Flat 7 | 77 Eaton Place | London | 26 November 1984

 

My dear Anne-Marie,

This is my last evening in England since I'm going to go doggo in the Aegean all winter: and am flying to Crete in the morning. I just thought I'd nip into the flat and there was your card.

I didn't mention the Salman R[ushdie] business because a. I knew you'd have been hurt: the question was how hurt b. I've had a terrific falling out with him over it. Really, it was too thoughtlessly cruel. And to what end? There he'd been feted, applauded – which apparently he needs – and then that! I'd rather if this was between us; but I do think he can be excused only on the grounds that he was going a bit off his rocker at the time. He wrote one wonderful book. For once the judges of a big literary prize were right at the right moment, but the whole business seems to have unhinged him a bit. The fatal thing is to turn oneself into a ‘
writer
'.

I could, I'm sure, get the
Tatler
to print what you have to say: but, in this tricksy city, people's memories are so very short, and it would, I feel, only titillate a morbid interest which would have nothing to do with Adelaide as such/or the Festival: but now S[alman] R[ushdie] has shot his mouth off again.

I can't quite remember whether you met him with me in all that hubbub; but he certainly knew of you through me and all that guff about the party was just a lot of blarney.

I'm riveted by the affair of Kath Strehlow and the Aboriginal collection.
⁶⁶⁶
What a mayhem it all is? Pint-sized egos being inflated all round. She was here for a bit on her way to Canada: I must say I'm sympathetic to the fact that they – whoever they are – were definitely trying, for the most venal and short-sighted reasons, to dismember Ted Strehlow's life work: And he – make no mistake – was a real homespun
genius
: examples of which, as we know, are in short supply. His
Songs of Central Australia
– wildly eccentric as it is – is not simply some kind of ethnographical tract: but perhaps the only book in the world – the only real attempt since the
Poetics
of Aristotle to define what song (and with song all language) is. He arrives at his conclusion in a crabby way. He must also have been impossible. But nonetheless VERY great, and far too important, obviously, to be seized upon by a bunch of ambitious bureaucrats.

If the matter hots up, I may, indeed have to hot foot it back. In the meantime I'll plod on.

As always with love,

Bruce

PS
Do let me know if there's anything you want me to do vis-à-vis para 2.

Excuse the yellow pad: it's all I have.

as from: Flat 7 | 77 Eaton Place | London | [November 1984]