Book Notes: "Civilization and Its Discontents" by Sigmund Freud

Civilization and Its Discontents by Sigmund Freud

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


It is quite clear that Freud was so far ahead of his time that some of his theories may still prove to be correct, in spite of what "modern" evidence suggests. Freud resonates with so many unspoken thoughts it would seem that psychoanalysis provided his laboratory of the unspoken, enabling him to grasp what others had or could not. Given the context of the times, Freud appears to me to have seen through the veneer of the Victorian era, and even grasped the problems of the present era. It is more than obvious he was well-read in art and literature and rightly deserves the title of "genius". I went to Freud after reading Andy Warhol (despite the seemingly disparate connection it made sense to me) and now I am compelled to explore Voltaire and Kant. Voltaire to comprehend the context of the sublime and Kant to try to discover how one could articulate so much from so little observation.



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Using Trove: Family and Local History Workshop

Trove Workshop at the Gunning Library, 17 June 2016

Gunning is a village in the Upper Lachlan Shire, situated about half-way between Goulburn and Yass.

Gunning marks the starting point of Hume and Hovell’s expedition that enabled settlement throughout the Murray region and established an inland route from Sydney to Melbourne. Up until that time, Gunning marked the limit of settlement, and in 1875, the end of the railway line from Sydney. As a major sheep grazing area, Gunning has had many periods of wealth, and this is reflected in the outstanding colonial and federation architecture in the village. The Gunning Library is one such example. Originally the Gunning Centenary Literary Institute, opened in 1925, the Gunning Library remains a community hub and a venue for the many community groups.

The Gunning Historical Society is an active group of committed locals with an interest in local and family history. Recently, the ABC program “Who’s Been Sleeping in My House” featured an episode on a local residence that is the former police lock-up, complete with underground cells. Keith Brown, a local author and former Deputy Official Secretary to the Governors-General Sir Zelman Cowan and Sir Ninian Stephen, recently published The Day Dunkley Died: Murder and Retribution in Colonial Gunning, the story of one of the more chilling incidents in Gunning’s history investigated on the ABC program. Brown’s work uncovers the facts and the myths surrounding Dunkley’s wife and her lover, Dunkley’s man-servant, who brutally murdered the settler while he slept, and were hanged and reportedly buried standing up “so they may never rest in peace”. Brown’s work continues a long tradition of historical scholarship in the region that includes an early history of Gunning by Mrs Flora Timms, whose article ‘The Centenary of Gunning’ and related journal submissions are now held in the Mitchell Library at the State Library of NSW. 

Last year, I was fortunate enough to acquire a lovely federation house in the village of Gunning, and discovered the history of the house from the time of the sale of the original town lot in 1878 to the building of the house in 1926. The National Library’s Trove database enabled me to discover that the first owner of the block of land was a journalist who later went bankrupt, and that the house was built by the local undertaker and his family. After joining the Gunning Historical Society, I met many others in the village who shared my passion for history, and given the long-established scholarly tradition and the encouragement of the Gunning Historical Society, I put together a workshop on using Trove to assist others in researching local and family history. The Gunning Library was a natural place for such an event, and after almost two decades of living in Canberra and being sheltered from the services offered by a traditional local government, I was pleasantly surprised to discover the Gunning Library has a computer room with internet access and access to numerous databases including Trove and ancestry.com.

On Friday 17^th June 2016, I ran two workshops on using Trove and ancestry.com for family and local history research. Both workshops were fully booked out and the team at Trove and ABC 666 in Canberra were interested in what we were doing at a local level. Participants were encouraged to bring along their own research projects, and after a brief introductory session on each database, I shared some of the tips and tactics I have gleaned from my many years of research using databases such as Trove.

I am happy to report that each participant found something interesting and relevant to their respective research projects, and there is demand for additional workshops using Trove and other services such as the National Archives of Australia collection and the Australian War Memorial’s war service records. It is pleasing to find that these fine national institutions are accessible in regional Australia, and with the superb facilities provided by the Gunning Library, the local community has a wonderful
resource for historical research.

In closing, I would like to make some observations about the symbolic importance of the Gunning Library and others like it. When the original Literary Institute was opened in 1925, the then member for Eden Monaro, Sir Austin Chapman, in his opening address, mentioned how Canberra would provide many opportunities for tourism in and around Gunning, while also using his address to chastise the Victorians for their opposition to the proposed location of the national capital. Trove can help to unearth many such stories throughout regional Australia. And recently, just before this workshop commenced, Labor promised to restore funding to Trove if it was elected. It would seem that despite their small stature, libraries like those at Gunning play an active role in community development. With appropriate engagement from the local academic community, citizens in rural and regional communities can continue to enjoy the country lifestyle, while at the same time playing an active part in the federation through access to the many first-rate national institutions. Indeed, Trove is one such institution, and I trust that our recent workshops have helped to perpetuate Gunning’s well-established scholarly tradition.

If you haven’t been to Gunning before, the local Lions Club runs a community market on the last Sunday of each month and it is well worth a visit. The village has a hotel, two excellent cafes, an art gallery and other stores selling arts and crafts, gifts, antiques and collectibles.

Book Notes: "On Paris" by Ernest Hemingway

On Paris by Ernest Hemingway

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This collection of journalistic pieces was written for the Toronto Star in the early 1920s and focus on Paris. Hemingway's early work here is part travel writer and part gossip columnist. The style would seem out of place today and, from personal experience, editors are only to ready to "correct" such work written in the "your correspondent" third person. It is a shame, in that Hemingway's style is very readable and rather witty. I doubt articles written about a foreign city would be of interest today, but at the time, many North Americans were keen on the exchange rate with France and Paris, of course, was a major destination. Moreover, I doubt that the "Orientalist" approach to reporting on foreign countries would be so readily apply to today's France, although destinations that still remain "foreign" to most Westerners may receive this treatment as a matter of course. This is a short but fruitful read and I was particularly impressed by the format and the cover, which makes for a robust yet accessible paperback style. I rarely comment on this aspect of a book but the cover style is remarkable.



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Book Notes: 'The Valley of the Moon' by Jack London

The Valley of the Moon by Jack London




Others have suggested this was the forerunner to Jack Kerouac's On the Road, but this is only evident in the third book. I was surprised by a dead-end thread character who reappears only briefly to show the changes in the prize-fighting protagonist as he becomes wiser. The usual Jack London class consciousness is evident but this time he seems to highlight the false consciousness of the proletariat not as a consequence of the system per se, but as the fault of an individual's lack of imagination. Although somewhat the epic, an interesting read that gripped me whenever I picked it up. And surprisingly, no classic London macabre ending to regret, although the climax is the weaker for it.



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Book Notes: 'Animal Farm' by George Orwell

Animal Farm by George Orwell

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


As I read the various characters' speeches, I was thinking of essay questions. "Read Major's speech and identify the theories of the great economic thinkers"; obviously Marx, but also Ricardo, Spencer et al. This Everyman's version contains a useful chronology outlining Orwell's life, and at each point, what was happening in literary circles and world events. Two of Orwell's (Blair's) prefaces were included as appendices. It would have been helpful to have access to (or, rather, noticed) such useful thoughts from the author in high school, but I suppose that such information would have been lost in my inexperience. The introduction by Julian Symons is concise but helpful, and now, of course, I must read Sir Bernard Crick's George Orwell: A Life.



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Book Notes: 'Picnic at Hanging Rock' by Joan Lindsay

Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I recall seeing the movie many years ago, but apart from the mysterious scene where the young women disappear, there was no trace of a story in my memory to influence my reading. The final page left me tingling. The story is rather creepy in a fatalistic way. Yet it is very good and I am pleased to have embarked upon my journey through Australiana literature.



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Book Notes: 'Jerry of the Islands' by Jack London

Jerry of the Islands by Jack London

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This book captures a part of the history of the Solomon Islands (and indeed, Australia), that has been conveniently forgotten. This book should be called Jerry the Racist Dog and it is difficult to see how the author's attitudes are not racist. Nevertheless, as I was recently informed by a reliable source, Lolita did not necessarily make Nabokov a paedophile, but it is still confronting. Written in the style of White Fang and Call of the Wild, the story is from Jerry's perspective, although more than a decade later. And unlike his stories about humans, the animal stories tend to have happy endings. I found an article in an Australian newspaper that shows part of London's inspiration for the book. While I must reserve judgement until I read some more of London's work, but in the meantime, I find it difficult to rate this book too highly.



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Book Notes: 'The Great Railway Bazaar' by Paul Theroux

The Great Railway Bazaar: By Train Through Asia by Paul Theroux

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I must admit that I enjoy travel novels. While not really fiction, there is typically a story with a beginning and an end that coincides with the departure and the arrival. Sometimes factual and historical, such as Sven Hedin's Silk Road, and at other times then-contemporary snapshots of a particular period in the recent past. This book includes the first chapter of Theroux's Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, which covers the same journey as The Great Railway Bazaar but thirty years later. I must say that I am not a fan of such marketing of other books. A simple pointer to the new book would have been sufficient but now I am compelled to read this first chapter so the former book is properly "finished". I often keep my own journals when I travel, and I have several all waiting to be retyped or rediscovered. Sometimes I will keep a journal during the mundane times and write simply what happened. It is often banal. Theroux apparently wrote in the past tense as it happened, but it is his reflections and self-deprecating manner, especially towards the end of his journey, that captures how one must feel at the end of four months' train travel. I found this aspect, along with the historiographical capturing of the past viewed from the perspective of someone living in the mid-seventies, to be particularly engaging. As a consequence, this was an easy and enjoyable read and re-affirms my taste for good travel novels.



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