Reading With Tea

“I believe I first realised I was going to like the Australian outback when I read that the Simpson Desert, an area bigger than some European countries, was named in 1932 after a manufacturer of washing machines.”

Is that not a fabulous cover for a book about Australia? A map (which manages not to leave off Tasmania) and ice cream. That’s what we’re all about.

“Clive James once likened the Opera House to ‘a portable typewriter full of oyster shells’, which is perhaps a tad severe”

This is my second Bryson read – I’ve also read his book on the UK, Notes from a Small Island. I’ve decided that I adore his writing when it’s about countries that I know. Which means I will have to stop reading his books because I don’t know any of the other places he’s written about very well. Unless he writes a book about northern Germany, or possibly airports, I’m out of familiar territory.

“Before us stood a sweep of bay as serene and inviting as you would find anywhere, and yet there was no environment on earth more likely to offer instant death.”

It’s clearly Bryson’s gorgeous mixture of dry, vaguely self-deprecating, ridiculous humour mixed with his genuine admiration for some of my favourite places. It is clear that he loves Australia – it shines off every page of this book. Oh, he’s terrified of all the deadly wildlife, and not so thrilled about the way the colonials treated the indigenous Australians (for that matter, we’re not doing all that much better now, given the huge differences in life metrics between immigrant and indigenous Australians), but his respect for the friendliness, openness and sheer beauty of the place is clear.

“I don’t wish to denigrate a sport that is enjoyed by millions, some of them awake and facing the right way, but it is an odd game. It is the only sport that incorporates meal breaks… It is the only competitive activity of any type, other than perhaps baking, in which you can dress in white from head to toe and be as clean at the end of the day as you were at the beginning.”

As usual when I read a book I adore, my copy is full of scruffy sticky tabs marking funny passages I want to quote (hence the inter-paragraph insertions). He is fabulously rude about Canberra and then finds a local girl who agrees wholeheartedly. I must note that about one-third of my family live in Canberra.

“I reckon if you were going to rank things for how much pleasure they give – you know? – Canberra would come somewhere below breaking your arm… At least with a broken arm you know it’ll get better.”

What blew me away about Down Under was that Bryson gets it. Why Australia is so fabulously brilliant and the people are so happy and why on earth do I live in London? Not only does he get Sydney’s beauty and Canberra’s astonishing dullness and the Nullarbor’s extraordinary flatness and Uluru’s significance; he drives around in the Outback for no particular reason and takes great delight in the story of a little old lady who manned a telegraph station on which a space mission became dependent. Bryson really cares about giving a comprehensive picture.

“These are people who get to live in a safe and fair-minded society, in a climate that makes you strong and handsome, in one of the world’s great cities – and they get to come to work in a boat from a children’s story book, across a sublime plane of water, and each morning glance up from their Heralds and Telegraphs to see that famous Opera House and inspiring bridge and the laughing face of Luna Park. No wonder they look so damned happy.”

This comes with the warning which ought to be printed on every Bryson work. “Do not read in public unless you are willing to suffer the embarrassment of snorting your tea out of your nose on the morning Tube commute due to inopportune laughter.”

“That is what a crocodile attack is like, you see – swift, unexpected, extremely irreversible.”

If you’ve been to Australia, if you are Australian, if you want to go: read this.

Additional info:

This was a personal copy, from Bookmooch.

Publisher: Transworld Publishers, 394 pages (paperback)

Order Down Under from Amazon*

* this is an affiliate link – I will be paid a small percentage of your purchase price if you use this link, which goes towards give-aways and site hosting costs.

“I was shocked just the same, at sitting in his chair with his favourite hat in my hands. There was a kind of violation in being so familiar with his ghost.”

In Helene Hanff’s third volume (after 84 Charing Cross Road and The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street), she returns to the start of her career, in which she decided to teach herself writing, picked up a volume by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch (the titular “Q”) and found so many references to books that she simply had to have, that she struck up a correspondence with a famous London bookshop. She takes us right through Q’s legacy, i.e. her writing success, through the events of 84, then the fame it brought her, leading to the events of The Duchess, and subsequent trips to London for adaptations of 84 for the TV (by the BBC, who else) and the stage.

This slender memoir is really two books hopelessly entangled. On the one hand there is a sweetly told story of being a struggling writer in New York in the 1940s to 60s

“I couldn’t return Harper’s $1,500, having flung it all away recklessly on food and rent.”

which has charm and character and a strong sense of the time at hand which reminded me of Rules of Civility. Why shouldn’t she evoke the 50s if she lived through them, I hear you grumble at your screen. Well, Q’s Legacy was written in 1985 by which stage Ms Hanff was nearly 70. Maybe I don’t sufficiently appreciate the strength of memory.

Anyway, the other half of the book is a fairly irritating, smug recollection of what happened after 84 Charing Cross Road, all the fan mail and visits to England and watching the various adaptations of her work, and it made me quite annoyed.

“I was gratefully aware that Rosemary was reading my letters with extraordinary warmth, wit and comprehension. But I’d read those letters in Hugh Whitemore’s TV script and heard them read over and over every day for ten long days of rehearsal; I’d had to read them again, in scripts submitted for my approval by amateur theatre groups from Massachusetts to Hong Kong; I’d had to read James’ script before it opened in Salisbury and again after he’d made changes in it for London. Now, at the Opening Night in London when I most wanted to relive the correspondence for my own personal reasons, I was finally sick to death of it.”

I think it’s best to stick just with the original 84. There is a charm and innocence to it which is not replicated in its sequels.

Additional info:

This  copy was kindly lent to me by friend C.

Publisher: Futura, 138 pages

Order Q’s Legacy from Amazon*

* this is an affiliate link – I will be paid a small percentage of your purchase price if you use this link, which goes towards giveaways.