5. Wandering Rocks
Chapter 5 reworks Joyce’s “Wandering Rocks” episode. The sub-episodes are ordered according to placings in the 1984 Melbourne Cup from first to last. Features of the horse and jockey are incorporated into the narrative.
“The society emerging from this unpromising beginning was callous, hypocritical, legalistic, but good at making the most of anything, whether native grasslands or human weakness. It was self-reliant, enterprising, with a kind of cocky confidence partly Irish, partly native-born, masculine and energetic.” – Beverley Kingston, A History of New South Wales (35) – perhaps the best quote about Sydney ever written.
Episode 1 – Black Knight
Black Knight (2pm) – 1984 Melbourne Cup winner.
An office in a skyscraper – 34 Hunter Street, Sydney. The offices of Ham Corp (known as Welles Investment Group for the purposes of this novel) in 1984.
Byerley Turk, the first British sire, captured at the Battle of Buda in 1686 – the battle of Buda (modern Budapest) was fought between the Holy League and the Ottoman Empire in Hungary. The Holy League retook Buda after a 78-day siege.
Thoroughbred Family 1 – a numeration system to designate female families of thoroughbred race horses. It was devised by Australian pedigree researcher, Bruce Lowe. His work Breeding Horses by the Figure System was published posthumously in 1895. It was based on his statistical compilation of the winners of the three English Classics; The Derby, The Oaks and the St. Leger. In the bottom line, the family which appeared most among the winners was assigned the family number 1. Byerley Turk was listed as the third sire for TREGONWELL’S NATURAL BARB MARE.”
Dam of the Two True Blues – a celebrated mare, belonging to Mr Bowes, of Streatlam, whose sire was the Byerley Turk, dam unknown.
Taproot of Thoroughbred Family 3 – See two entries immediately above.
Weatherby’s General Stud Book – a breed registry in the United Kingdom and Ireland used to document thoroughbred breeding and foundation bloodstock. First published in 1793 and updated every four years.
Ana Lafei scores a plumb parking spot opposite Artspace – independent art gallery at 20 Palmer Lane, Darlinghurst in the 1980s. Nick Vickers was the curator. Location of “On Some Australian Mountain Range” exhibition by Justin Trendall and Bill Dunbar in 1987. Trendall’s epic work, “Darlinghurst,” is now part of the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney.
Governor Bourke Street – Richard Bourke, Governor of NSW, 1831-1837. Ana’s apartment in Aston Hall is a distance of 350 metres down Bourke Street from Artspace. For more information on Governor Bourke, see Chapter 5 Episode 18 (p.308).
A hire car emerges from St Peters Lane – driven by Don Cane.
She baulks – Ana Lafei is impeded by a vehicle driven by Don Cane. Thus, the son’s friend crosses the path of the father.
Bourke created the domestic conditions in New South Wales that rendered transportation impractical – a brief, factual history lesson follows
Currency Lads and Lasses – derogatory term for first generation of Australian-born Europeans.
Sydney was an economic bubble-bath nonetheless – see Kingston epigraph above.
Darwin’s lament – Charles Darwin visited Sydney on the HMS Beagle in 1837. Initially positive about the colony, he became disillusioned by its materialism. His journal, The Voyage of the Beagle (1839), records this ambivalence. He bemoans the failure of punishment against convicts, but ends with a favourable comparison to Spanish settlements in South America.
“The Wandering Rocks” episode dramatizes the spiritual sterility and moral cannibalism of Dublin under occupation – Joyce’s gameplan.
Ireland’s position as servant of both the Roman Catholic Church and Imperial England is framed by the first and last sub-episodes in the forms of Father Conmee and the Earl of Dudley. Both characters epitomize the tactics of their caste for Joyce – a brilliant framing device by Joyce. Technically non-repeatable. TMAC splatters chronology, putting characters in motion under the framing device of placings in the Melbourne Cup on that day. This is an obvious allusion to the chain of references in Ulysses to Gold Cup Day, Throwaway’s victory etc.
The former moves through the local population with excessive attention to detail, eliciting information and smoothing the surface of society. The latter races through the crowd in a sealed carriage showing no interest in the people or their welfare – More on Conmee and Dudley.
These extremes are used by Joyce to establish the conditions for the emergence of the Holy Trinity of Bloom as Elijah (Humanism), Stephen as Artist (Joyce himself) and Molly as Earth Mother that will redeem all Ireland – links to Joyce’s Trinity.
Darwin’s mysterious agency. Strong extirpating weak. Cruel but unavoidable – a reference to the theories of Charles Darwin, not the northernmost city of Australia; although it does apply to that place.
Contrast Euphuism with Modernist asides – an affected prose style which takes it name from the romance Euphues (158) by John Lyly.
Ana entered a first-floor apartment discarding her uniform as she walked. A coin dropped onto tiles. ALP was the sound it made. Puakaeafe. Eve is another palindrome. INSERT white gaze. Fairy Princess Moe. Admiring eyes. Gauguin’s wicked art. Don’t you remember Black Alice. Naked, Ana entered the bathroom. Te Nave Nave Fenua in the shaving cabinet mirror. Bust of Truganini by Benjamin Law – these references mainly refer to the problematic interactions between colonising men and local women:
- ALP: character in Wake
- Puakaeafe: Polynesian name meaning “one thousand pigs.”
- INSERT white gaze: of men at colonised women.
- Princess Moe: probably referring to Teriʻivaetua (1869-1918), second daughter of Tamatoa V and Moe-a-Mai, a member of the Pōmare Dynasty, and heiress apparent when the Kingdom of Tahitiwas annexed by France in 1880.
- Gauguin: Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) was a French painter who spent the last ten years of his life in Polynesia where he appropriated local style, coloration and imagery.
- Black Alice: reference to the first line, “Don’t you remember Black Alice, Sam Holt,” in Banjo Paterson’s poem, “Sam Holt.”
- Te Nave Nave Fenua : title of Gauguin’s painting better known as “Delightful Land.”
- Bust of Truganini by Benjamin Law – controversial artwork (c.1835-36)
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second during her maiden visit to Australia, the first by an English monarch, in 1954, part of the House of Windsor’s benighted lap of dishonour to try to apply belated unction to its fast-unravelling empire –
Dionysius of Turramurra – Greek god of decadence in an upper middle-class, northern suburb of Sydney.
Lord HA-HAW – nickname for William Joyce, WW2 British broadcaster in the service of Nazi Germany. Hanged for Treason in 1946.
Phar Lap – legendary Australian racehorse of the 1930s, poisoned on arrival in America. Famous for a massive heart, which is on display at the National Museum of Australia, Canberra.
“Replied,” for instance, is only used on fourteen occasions [in Ulysses] as opposed to one-hundred-and-seventy-seven times in the current draft of this work. “Asked” is equivalent across both novels. It is actually used one-hundred-and-ninety-three times in both Ulysses and the current draft (as at 04/09/2018). By contrast, the post-modern technique of signposting correspondences with the word “insert” is wholly absent from Joyce. He uses it on only ten occasions. Here, it is utilised two-hundred-and-forty times – the wonders of Navigation tool in WORD and Find Text function in Adobe PDF for literary analysis.
Old Albion. Always up for a free feed of lamb and dampener – an Australian perspective on the British Empire and its later manifestations. Note pun on ‘damper,’ which is an Australian bush bread.
Cast-offs sent seven months sailing hence – approximate sailing time for the First Fleet from 13 May 1787 to 18 January 1788. Eleven vessels carried ~1,500 people with stores for 252 over 24,000 km without losing a single ship. Forty-eight people died, a death rate of just over three (3) per cent.
Tommy Townsend planted a seed. Cenotaph of dead species – Thomas Townshend or Baron Sydney (from 1783) was Home Secretary in the Pitt Government. He was responsible for establishing the convict settlement at Botany Bay after the American War of Independence. He chose Arthur Phillip as Governor and ensured that the penal colony had sufficient supplies to survive its early years of operation. He was a coloniser at heart, not a penaliser. He was also famous for his support for America and role in the peace settlement in Paris as well as the development of Canada.
Call Arthur Philip back from Spain – Townsend send for Phillip who was acting as a spy in Spain prior to his commission as Governor of New South Wales.
Bastards bearing their father’s coat of arms altered with cadency – illegitimate sons were allowed to use their father’s coat of arms but altered with cadency in the form of a bend, fess, chief, chevron or quarter. This is the origin of the term, Bend Sinister.
Gin-busting gangs – local thugs in the late 18th century penal colony of Sydney Town.
Shoot a blackfella take his woman back to camp everyone rapes her then kill her with an axe. Whorehouse rabbit cages. Fig of tobacco leaf buys alibi – common practices during the Indigenous genocide.
Truck-stop grog-swaps at Moree – a modern version of popular crimes from the Indigenous genocide.
Eureka race riots – a complex period in Australian history. The Eureka Stockade (1854) has been seen as gold miners standing up to authority over the pernicious cost of mining permits. Nonetheless, its origins were racism against Chinese miners. The Eureka flag has been used as a symbol of Australian individuality and freedom. However, it has been annexed in recent times by ultra-nationalist groups ad bears some similarities to the use of the Union flag in America.
Irish revolts of 1846 – an uprising on the penal colony at Norfolk Island in July 1846. It was also known as the Cooking Pot Riot because it was triggered by the confiscation of convict cooking vessels.
Lambing Flat – name for one location in a series of race riots against Chinese miners and shopkeepers in 1860-61. The NSW Government sent troops to protect the Chinese miners, but no compensation was paid for their losses.
Buckland River – site of a riot against Chinese miners in 1857.
White Australia – the White Australia policy was the culmination of 19th century racism against Asian and Pacific Island immigrants. It was formalised through the Immigration Restriction Act 1901, which was one of the first pieces of legislation introduced into the Australian Parliament after Federation. Its simple trick was to give immigration officers the power to make any non-European migration applicant sit a 50-word dictation test in any prescribed language. The test was administered 1,359 times up to 1909 with only 52 applicants being granted entry to Australia. After 1909, zero (0) applicants passed the test. The policy was diluted after the Second World War, but did not end until 1966. It was finally eliminated by the Whitlam Government with the Racial Discrimination Act 1975.
Haig’s trench cattle – Field Marshal Douglas Haig commanded British troops from 1915-1918. Australian soldiers were considered dispensable upon arrival to France in 1916 (see Battle of Fromelles). By 1918, they were frontline shock troops under General John Monash who busted open the German Lines and brought an end to the war.
There was no Imperial Preference in 1930. Just Niemeyer’s cold facts. Pay back your war debts or else we’ll send Jardine – Imperial Preference was a policy promoted at the start of the 20th century to create a British Empire trading bloc. With typical subservience, the Dominions enacted policies of imperial preference: Canada (1897), New Zealand (1903), South Africa (1903), and Australia (1907). However, Great Britain did NOT reciprocate until the 1932 Ottawa Conference. The Great Depression reached its nadir in Australia with a Bank of England mission led by Otto Niemeyer to enforce debt repayments. These were largely war debts accrued supporting Great Britain in the Great War. Niemeyer became infamous for his outspoken attacks on Australian society and people. In 1933, the MCC toured Australia under Douglas Jardine. He was the architect of the Bodyline theory of fast bowling, developed to combat the success of Donald Bradman. The physical assault on Australian batsmen led to a diplomatic crisis. While the British laughed it off, it was another element in the detachment of Australia from its imperial origins.
You stop Rommel. We’ll fuck you over in Greece – the normal deal when Australian troops fell under the control of British generals. The Australian 6th Division was the leading infantry force that repelled General Erwin Rommel at the Siege of Tobruk for 7 months during 1941, halting his progress towards Egypt. It was then transferred to Greece for a disastrous campaign planned and led by the British.
Do not pass Rangoon, do not collect two hundred Spitfires – In February 1942, Churchill (and Roosevelt) urged the diversion of the Australian 9th Division to Burma to protect India from Japanese attack. It was returning to Australia to face the Japanese Army in New Guinea. Curtin rejected the request. Military historians generally agree that the 9th AIF would have been sacrificed in Burma.
Changi’s sagging stalks – POWs in Changi Prison, Singapore.
They planted a Cross upon our blistered forehead at Maralinga – ironic reference to Ezekiel 9:4. The British conducted nuclear tests at Maralinga in South Australia during the 1950-1960s.
Tumour-clouds floating down Ceduna – Ceduna is a town on the western coast of South Australia. some 400km to the south-east of Maralinga. Winds from some nuclear tests blew radioactive debris over Ceduna.
Colonel Cornwall sir – military figure in TMAC. He gives a reading at the funeral of Albert Wheaton in C3. Later, he appears with Don Cane at the Crest Hotel, Kings Cross, in C10 to discuss business opportunities in the Philippines.
It starts at two-forty – starting time of the 1984 Melbourne Cup.
Telemachus leaving port. A virgin helpmate ocean. Athena sitting in the stern – In Book 15 of the Odyssey, Telemachus is instructed by Athena to return home from Lacedaemon to Ithaca. He receives omens of good fortune, culminating in a hawk strewing a dove’s feathers in front of his crew.
Peter Cook in the saddle. Barrier twelve – Details of Black Knight’s jockey and barrier draw.
Get three wide – instructions to Cook for riding Black Knight. This is a metaphor for Telemachus’ discursive journey.
Go fwd come back in time draw a diagram mix characters. Need a Gant chart. Would extend even Joyce. Don’t just stitch places together like him – the narrator self-reinforces the objective of C5 to disrupt temporal chronology.
Ana moved her fingers relentlessly – she begins masturbating in the shower.
Become clairvoyant like Tiresias – blind Theban seer cited by Elizabeth Archer in C2 with reference to Tom Hallem.
Insert Shanghai Dog – major character to be introduced into the text in S17, C5. Such proleptic references allude to how Joyce handled Molly Bloom as an unintroduced presence during Ulysses.
Evidence of Nestor – Nestor provides Telemachus with the first tangible evidence that his father is still alive.
First detective story – Telemachus seeking out the truth about his father’s whereabouts in the Odyssey could be considered the first detective story.
Fingers punching a worn-down keypad – reference to the first page of TMAC.
Surftide suck’n’spit – tidal imagery recalling Stephen Dedalus in Ulysses. When I punched this text into Google Search to try to find the direct allusion to Ulysses, I found that TMAC was Number 1 result on the internet beating popular US TV series Wires. For screenshot image, see Gallery.
Leon’s first sarcoma. A death sentence. RESULTS PENDING – Leon Archer has tested positive for HIV and is exhibiting the first physical signs of AIDS in TMAC. Kaposi’s Sarcoma is a rare type of cancer that initially presents as small, discoloured patches on the skin or inside the mouth before attacking the internal organs. It is a typical symptom of the onset of AIDS, for which there was no treatment in 1984 when TMAC was set.
Elizabeth Archer picked up a notice: “Your next appointment at the Albion Street Centre is with [handwritten] Dr Julian Gold [next line] on [next line] Tuesday, 6 October, 4.30pm.” – Dr Julian Gold opened the first dedicated HIV/AIDS testing centre and clinic in 1985. It has been backdated slightly for use in TMAC.
Elizabeth threw it in the bin – an ambiguous symbol. She could be she angry, upset or dismissive.
The Tank Stream bore a Throwaway down its sandstone vein – The Tank Stream was Sydney’s first source of drinking water and the reason for the establishment of the penal colony at what is now known as Circular Quay. The “throwaway” refers to a key, polysemous symbol in Ulysses. It is used to refer to a discarded advertising flyer. It is also the name of the horse which wins the Gold Cup. It is also a more oblique reference to literature.
Bathsheba at bath – See Swinburne’s “Masque of Queene Bersabe.”
Jags in the scrub over the fence watched Penelope Hallem unbutton her blouse – “jags’ is a colloquial term for ‘voyeurs.’ A similar term is “Peeping Toms.”
Bloom handling his cock watching Gerty. Klute documenting Bree’s tricks. Pakula’s Paranoia Trilogy – Bloom masturbates while he watches Gerty McDowell on the beach. This completes a sequence of references to Stephen and Bloom at the beach in Ulysses. “Klute” (1971) was a successful movie starring Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland. She played the prostitute, Bree. Alan Pakula was the director of three (3) films which have been labelled the “paranoia trilogy”: Klute (1971), The Parallax View (1974) and All the President’s Men (1976).
For just a moment you recall the name ‘Desdemona’ although who she is – and her context – completely escapes you – allusion to Othello. It alludes to a businessperson who studied the play during High School then forgot most of its contents.
Since Adam and Kronos first crawled out of the muck demanding obeisance all-the-time modelling inappropriate behaviour – fathers who behaved badly.
Just Edmund out of Shagga Maher. The dark and vicious place where thee he got cost him eyes. A metaphor is turned into a physical infliction by Shakespeare in the blinding of Gloucester– Edgar and Edmund Welles are updates of Shakespeare’s half-brothers in King Lear. The name, Shagga Maher, is a phonetic pun on Chagemar, who finished second in the 1984 Melbourne Cup.
My mother and I writhed along the dunny cart lanes of Sydney with miscellaneous bags after we left him. A series of bedsits in Kings Cross, Marrickville, Kirribilli, Campsie. Poor plots. Regional racetracks. Weak fields – the author reflects on the peregrinations of his own childhood, projecting it onto the bastard son.
She died at the start of a Dickens novel like Mary Wollstonecraft. She died after post-natal surgery 10 days after the birth of her second daughter, Mary, at the age of thirty-eight – reference to typical plot constructs in novels by Charles Dickens. On 30 August 1797, Mary Wollstonecraft gave birth to Mary. The placenta broke during birth and became infected. She died of septicaemia on 10 September 1797.
A common chambermaid swept from a burning room. Dad sent us both to boarding school. A kind of Flat Idealism. Godwin’s Utility. Either save the valet, my father, and thus our line, or else rescue Fenelon, who could ameliorate all of mankind – this passage refers to William Godwin’s theories as exemplified by the “fire case” in which a reader must consider whether to save a chamber maid or Archbishop Fénelon from a burning room, knowing that Fénelon will compose Télémaque in the future while the chambermaid will be the reader’s mother. Godwin argues that Fenelon should be saved. There is an obvious link here between the 2 x versions of Telemachus. The joke in TMAC is that the chambermaid remains the author’s mother, while the author will become the writer of Telemachus.
Call in Larry Conrod from Perth. Raise some fast capital. Launch a hostile takeover. Take back the family business. Conceal madness with mildness. Wear a patient’s face – precis of an M&A based on the failed Fairfax takeover.
The outsider will race in blinkers like bung Gloucester. Dark bay. Molos. From that outstanding racehorse and useful sire, Donatello, out of One Thousand Guineas runner-up, Aurora. Daughter of Hyperion who sired Helios, Selene and Eos. Ranked amongst the best stayers in history. Fifty kilos in the saddle. Quiet as stone – description of Black Knight, winner of the 1984 Melbourne Cup. Gloucester is the Duke of Gloucester in King Lear, who had his eyes put out with a burning stake. Black Knight was a dark bay, which Molos possesses. Also, a type of ancient guard dog.
Adrift Sargasso – alludes to Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys. Also, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte on which it is based. See also Ezra Pound’s “Portrait of a Woman.”
Speculate about the length and depth of the current recession blame Keating praise him scarify Lynch regret the fall of Whitlam and or Fraser – Australia was in regular recession after the Oil Shocks of the early 1970s. Phillip Lynch was Treasurer in the Fraser Government (1875-1983), which implemented brutal economic policies to try to stabilise the economy after deposing the Whitlam Government (1972-1975) in a coup. The Hawke Government with Paul Keating as Treasurer reformed the Australian economy from 1983.
They chew on a Fisherman’s Friend for comfort until it burns like some long-forgotten teat. –
Dublin is the main character in “Wandering Rocks.” Joyce creates a tone of postpartum stress in the population as 3pm arrives. The daily grind has started to slow inexorably. Activity is frenetic yet unproductive. Symbols of decline surround all characters.
Sydney displayed the debility of High Modernism. Trapped between a dead economy and one yet powerless to be born. What Keating was fixing – Australia was still gripped by the torpor of complacent economic policies since 1950s in the period when TMAC was set. In this instance, this situation is seen as a metaphor for both Sydney and the state of latter twentieth century literature.
A one-dollar note floated down the gutter – reference to the throwaway in Ulysses.
Edmund means Wealth Protector – what this name actually means in Old English. Nice use by Shakespeare.
Ulysses is still charter-driven in Episode Ten. The progress of different characters can be plotted across time in each sub-episode. CREATE SPREADSHEET – Joyce’s complex plot required a chart. It demonstrate fidelity to the passage of time.
The Right Reverent Arthur Kemp picked up the soggy bill, rubbed it on his coat sleeve, deposited it into his cassock and brushed a cable of lank hair over his exposed skull, displaying two black hands on his pearl wristwatchface. The longer leaner
aspired to reach One. The smaller thicker dropped beneath Two. A red second hand ticked out each allotted instant – the time is 2.05 pm.
A busker’s tin whistle whined some patriotic aery – all references to someone playing a wind instrument in C5 refer to John Dengate, a [socialist] musician from Glebe, Sydney.
Aengus’ heart still pulsed for antipodes / Despite comparables like New York, Paris and London / Far and wide roaming made no difference / he stilled call Australia HOME – precis of the chorus of of Peter Allen’s classic song, “I Still Call Australia Home.”.
At the centre of the novel, Joyce’s central characters recede as if to suggest that the world can no longer yield heroes. The episode’s technique is “Mechanic.” The hand of the author is continuously displayed in the arbitrary criss-crossing and forced interpenetration of passages: in both its senses as ‘course’ and ‘discourse’ – this is a secondary reflection. It is primarily an episode of continuous flow with embedded logic.
Reverend Kemp (Father Conmee) proceeded along the footpath towards the anxious gait of Missus Janet Howe (Mrs Sheehy), wife of the Deputy Opposition Leader – direct lifts from Ulysses pivoted to include the wife of future Australian PM, John Howard.
The Minister passed her an envelope containing correspondence on the benefits of a consumption tax from a recently retired constituent – another steal from Ulysses.
Professor McNab got down on beige knees and shone a flashlight through a grate in the car park wall – this sub-plot concerns the efforts of a historian from the University of Sydney to locate the course of the Tank Stream under Sydney CBD.
You check the glove box. There is a log book, a service book, a street directory and a small hand-compass trapped in the corner by a screwdriver on a bed of dust and copper coins – contents of my mother’s car glovebox in 1984.
Joyce’s love of speed. He lent Boccioni’s book to Bugden – Umberto Boccioni (1882-1916) was a leading figure in Futurism, an art movement sought to depict speed/motion. His sculptures are incredible.
Palazzeschi. He comes to your aide – Aldo Palazzeschi served a similar role for Boccioni to Frank Bugden for Joyce.
Millennial Eden lurks beneath his face – pun on Bernard O’Dowd’s poem, “Australia.”
I scanned a throwaway. HARD COCKS, it read. Elijah is coming. New Hellas. Demesne for mammon to infest. He assumed an expression of wonderment. TOP ADULT EMPORIUM! – more puns on O’Dowd’s “Australia” combined with references to the ‘throwaway’ in Ulysses and an advertisement for sex aids.
“England and Scotland,” quipped the guard. “The Rose and the Thistle. Each way” – an equivocal bet on Rose and Thistle in the 1984 Melbourne Cup, which represent England (the Rose) and Scotland (the thistle) respectively.
My pricksong plays. Bona constrictor. Pox of antics. Duellists. Let him recoil in disgust. Zip it off. Would he beat me? – a fantasy of sexual congress.
“Wandering Rocks” is directed out of the page. The reader must navigate its scattered dividend, forever keeping in mind the story to date, whilst being drawn down an ‘unambitious underwood’ of local journeys that dwindle towards stark dead ends, as if mis-guided by Robert Browning, in order to reach the other side of the page, unwaned, and stand Hieratic. Joyce needles the text with recurrent images, characters and themes like sew-many Ariadne. But he also shreds narratorial authenticity with what Clive Hart called lies of omission, mal-connections and deliberated gaps. The technique of the episode is ‘labyrinth.’ Yet even Joyce is ultimately driven to formal closure. He must start, cross and finish the episode directing every journey across mapped space. This is no anti–closure Romantic trope. It is a finely tuned schema. You could set your watch by it. Everything is clockwork – summary of this episode in Ulysses.
Father John Conmee opens the episode. He is an affable imbecile whose attitude is symptomatic of the veneer of civility exercised by the Roman Catholic Church. Joyce repeats his name and title fifty-seven times in this short sub-episode. He is a weak reader of life with a reductive mind that misrepresents people and activities in his haste to pin unthinking slogans UP/on a grateful populace. He is a cultivated CON artist. Voyeurism, materialism, envy and repressed sexuality are his most prominent traits. This is a familiar group of vices in Victorian fiction – a character assessment.
Swinburne’s Faustine got Ruskin “all hot, like pies with the devil’s fingers innem” – an erotic poem; a repressed Victorian.
Chidley wore sweat at a washer-woman with her skirt up standing over a bubbling copper – see Confessions of William James Chidley. He was a dietary, dress and gender politics reformer in Sydney in early c20.
Pale Nausicaa in a stream – combines Odysseus coming upon Nausicaa in the Odyssey with Swinburne’s “Masque of Queene Bersabe”.
“‘Let us F**k,’ ejaculated the Superior in Autobiography of a Flea. ‘Amen,’ chanted Father Ambrose.” – climactic moment in anonymous c19 pornographic, anti-Catholic novel.
“Good luck Mister Edgar,” said Keith Carpenter in echoes departing. A servingman proud in heart and mind. Who gives anything now for poor Tom. The vaults. Underground. The pipes. These things remember me – compares TMAC security guard with King Lear.
It is Edmund that possess volition. Edgar speaks on less than one hundred occasions in King Lear. Many times, just single lines. He uses the phrase “foul fiend” on eight occasions. He weeps in pity for another old man’s plight. He is stoic towards his own. At the end, he turns a knife in his brother’s guts saying “let’s exchange charity” – analysis of speech in King Lear.
His trouser pocket contained a fifty-dollar TAB ticket on Black Knight. Third in the Dalgety last Saturday coming home. Five-year-old gelding. Right age; correct birthplace; requisite number of nuts. A technical decision. A five-year-old had won 13/28 Cups since 1955. New Zealand bred horses had been successful 19 times in the last 28 races. Lighter bags would help it over 3,200 metres. Flat wide Flemington track. Not hard like Royal Randwick. Up the rise and over the hump – summary of the form and character of the 1984 Melbourne Cup winner.
Good preparation. Raced every ten days since August – Black Knight had been fine-tuned for success by trainer George Hanlon.
Get some rush in Newtown maybe trawl the stalls at the bath house on Albermarle Street. Place a sign on the noticeboard. Bottom seeks Top. Thirty years old. Tanned. Muscular. Likes Bears. Meet opposite Camperdown Grandstand. Ten pm weeknights – typical menu for anonymous gay sex scene as the AIDS crisis commenced. Note grandstand has already appeared in C2 with tom Hallem as participant.
Tom Bass urinal – sculpture in Sydney CBD memorialized by editors of Oz magazine urinating in its Modernist basins.
A bronze of oxidised characters is marooned on the median strip in the Cahill Expressway. Cut off from the State Library. Abiding metaphor for Australian culture – Shakespeare “memorial” (1926) by Sir Edgar Bertram Mackennal (1863-1931). A central bronze of Bard is surrounded by Romeo and Juliet, Othello, Portia and Falstaff. Originally located in Shakespeare Square in the forecourt of the NSW State Library, it was relocated and left marooned on a median strip by the construction of the Cahill Expressway in 1959. This is seen by the narrator as emblematic of Australian attitudes to art and literature.
My father’s great cobber, Bob Askin, helped all his developer mates to the trough – a character, Stan Welles, recalls high-level political support in the 1960s for the appropriate redevelopment of Sydney CBD.
Sydney Rum Hospital… Statue of Albert the Good…. the Convict Barracks…. St Mary’s Cathedral – sequence of heritage features on Macquarie Street travelling south.
Its quire marks the time. Two-fifteen – narrative time (temporal progress is discombobulated in C5).
Rough palms of Brother Quinn. Wiggling my bottom on the warm leather seat. Strap off his trousers long and unwound. As you came fwd palm-thrust-in-nape. Go down. In the gloomy presbytery, his arthritic talons manipulated my nut. Sticky he lifted its web in his gloating fingers. Sick stomach-lust. Power of first orgasm. Still re-craved. I cannot detach myself. Need sordid places. Need shame – a memory of first paedophilic experience (note: autobiographical).
Hard-on rising deep inside shaft. CUM NOW. HERE. DESPITE – In the subsequent passage, Edgar Welles begins masturbating whilst driving from the city towards Camperdown.
Kent Brewery – site for the production of Reschs’ beer.
Fairfax buildings gone all grey – site for the production of the Sydney Morning Heald, the city’s leading newspaper since 1831.
St Barnabas – an Anglican church. Popular signboard featured quirky religious marketing.
The eight faces of the Grace Bros tower clocks registered eight different times – twin follies on Broadway in the Federation/Edwardian style with clock towers and globes. The original five storey building was built in 1904 and its matching sibling in 1923.
Accelerate past university. Under the footbridge. Cute student in bus shelter hard right. So wet you can see his torso – allusion to start of C4.
A young woman in a loose singlet moved into the open space rolling a dirty white bed sheet – first reference to Peroxide Girl. Escort in C7. Girlfriend of Willy the Pimp.
Silently, late, on heated summer nights, the house monitor would come and rouse him – another allusion to sexual abuse of Edgar in boarding school.
Alone again in a cubicle as the empty train clattered along the goods line past Tremain’s flour mill. Harbinger of grinding sleep – prolepsis of Tom Hallem travelling ‘home’ at the end of TMAC.
There was a single entrance to the toilets under the west staircase – popular beat at Camperdown Park.
Pax multa diligentius legem tuam. Psalm 119 – ironic reference to Psalm about goodness and righteousness.
The Hebrew letter S(H)IN – pun on the twenty-first letter of the Semitic writing system.
Kiss the Mazzuzah. Shabbai. Yeshua. Shalom. Number 300. Letter “T” (Gk). A Cross – jumble of religious allusions during perverted act.
He takes my covenant in his hands and presses it towards his robes. Screwing my wig. Will he bruise my plump willing cheek? Pulse racing – the episode ends in mutual sexual activity.
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