Book Notes: "Walk a Mile in My Shoes" by Tom Collins

Walk a Mile in My Shoes by Tom Collins

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


My grandmother insisted I read this book when I was in my mid-teens, more than thirty years ago. I recalled the book recently and managed to purchase a copy; so this is my second reading. The book was originally published in 1981. This version was published in 2000. As I read, I could not help feel awkward about the conservative Queensland idea of doing "the right thing", something I struggled to escape from initially then later see for myself how I might make my own way with my own ideas about existence. My grandmother insisted that we did not know how hard it was back in the old days. Tom Collins insisted that we should know through his story. Having worked in the scrub in Far North Queensland and experienced physical hardship through work as a chain-man (surveyor's assistant) and later with the military, I feel I have some idea about hardship and physical toil, although obviously not the experience of the Great Depression. So as I read I often pulled a face at the moralising tone. Until the very end of the book. An epilogue, written by Collins' daughter, Cynthia, has been added to this later edition. In 1999, Collins was in a nursing home suffering from dementia. His tale had been told. Despite my reluctance, I have often recollected his stories throughout my life and I was sad to learn of his demise. But his story has been told. And well-received.



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Book Notes: "Towards a New Architecture" by Le Corbusier

Towards a New Architecture by Le Corbusier

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This translation of Towards a New Architecture, originally written in 1923, is prophetic in many ways. Le Corbusier writes of the “machine age” much like someone now might write of the “information age”. But he is somewhat poetic, repetitive and I would not be surprised if Tom Peters (ex-Harvard innovation guru) adopted something of Le Corbusier's style. While many of the architect's ideas were controversial, and may not have functioned as desired, he foresaw many of the things that are happening today in terms of construction materials. Although I do not doubt that the way these materials have been used meet the "cheapness" but not necessarily the "good work" he envisaged (p. 284). My favourite quote: "There is no such thing as primitive man. There are primitive resources. The idea is constant, strong from the start" (p. 70).



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Book Notes: "The Shipping News" by Annie Proulx

The Shipping News by Annie Proulx

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I have wanted to read The Shipping News since I first learnt of its Pulitzer Prize winning credentials in The Bulletin back in the 'nineties. I am not usually a fan of recent fiction but this work is very good. A back cover review cited from The Sunday Telegraph wrote of the style as "compressed" and "poetic" and this mirrors my own thoughts on the prose. What impresses me most about Proulx is that she did not publish her first novel until she was in her fifties, and The Shipping News is a masterpiece, proving that it is still possible to flower in the latter stages of middle-age. Having travelled briefly through The Maritimes, specifically Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, the novel brought back memories of the frozen sea and the various shanties along the coast of New Brunswick. At the time, these sights sent me back to my childhood memories of the television series The Beachcombers (although the series is from the west coast), and what was then that strange land of First Nations peoples, "Mounties" and Quebecois to the north of the United States rarely seen on Australian television. The cold salt air, the smell of seafood, that the sea could be frozen at all - Proulx captures these magnificently while weaving a story of lost souls, like driftwood, colliding with events directed by freezing currents. Towards the end I had to try to piece together the various characters whose individuality tended to blend into one another. In this edition, a typographical error where Bunny is a "he"; and another where the character Tert Card appears as Terd Card, stick in my mind. Nevertheless, on finishing the book I was rewarded with the tingling sensation of a well-written novel and an enlightened story. It was worth the wait, lived up to the expectations that have been built up for me over the last twenty years, and encouraged me to consider expanding my reading program beyond my recent focus on early twentieth-century authors. Will The Shipping News stand the test of time and become a classic? Given that the heartache of dying communities far from the fringes of the burgeoning metropolises continues while shallow urban existence intrigues, when the façade collapses, The Shipping News might just become the "backronym" that first truly captured the phenomenon in quality literature.



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