Maurice Sendak has passed away.

Let the rumpus start.

May he rest not in peace, but in some wild, affectionate place, where the monsters are his friends and he is their king.

May he continue to roar his terrible roars

and gnash his terrible teeth

and roll his terrible eyes

and show his terrible claws.

The world has eaten him up, it loved him so.

He has gone into the night of his very own room;

I hope his supper is waiting for him

and that it still hot.

As you probably already know, in a recent act of outstanding idiocy, the new Premier of Queensland withdrew funding for the Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards.

Plenty of people have posted detailed and intelligent responses to this outrage, while I’ve been offline, so I won’t add my indignant restating of their valid critique of his position here.

I’ll just say that the Queensland Literary Awards, a grass-roots response to the canning of the awards, will take place this year. This includes the categories that are dearest to my heart: the emerging author award and the Unaipon Award, both of which, although they won’t come with a well-deserved cheque, WILL include publication by UQP.

Please, if you have a manuscript, demonstrate your commitment to yourself, your work, and the literary arts by entering the award this year.

You can find details on how to enter at the QLA site, which has been established by Matt Condon and Krissy Kneen.

go here:

George Whitman passed away yesterday, in a room above his bookstore, Shakespeare and Company, on the Rue de Bucherie, Paris.

Today, I was reading Barry Lopez’s essay ‘Landscape and Narrative’ from the collection Crossing Open Ground. Lots to think about here, but two things that I want to come back to, and think about some more:

A story draws on relationships in the exterior landscape and projects them onto the interior landscape. The purpose of storytelling is to achieve harmony between the two landscapes, to use all the elements of story – syntax, mood, figures of speech – in a harmonious way to reproduce the harmony of the land in the individual’s interior. Inherent in story is the power to reorder a state of psychological confusion through contact with the pervasive truth of those relationships we call ‘the land’.

[This is a beautiful sentiment, and very appealing, and it makes sense in the context of the essay, but I want to explore the 'but' here, too. Not all stories operate this way - as consolation, reparation, solace, etc. Just today I was reading Rjurik Davidson's essay on 'torture porn films and politics' at Overland, which is about stories (albeit in film, but they have their corresponding narratives in print) that are at least partially the opposite of the kind of stories Lopez is describing here. Do Lopez's ideas hold when applied to narratives of horror, dislocation, or despair? To Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground, to Shakespeare's King Lear? Or even to less dramatically or diametrically different works: Peter Carey's Theft, say, or Kris Olsson's The China Garden? To comedies, romances, urban grunge. Perhaps the question is moot - perhaps he doesn't mean to refer to all stories, but only to some kinds of stories. But then, what kind of stories does he mean ... I need to chew that over. Read the essay again. Think more.]

Elsewhere in the same essay, Lopez writes:

This feeling, an inexplicable renewal of enthusiasm after storytelling, is familiar to many people. It does not seem to matter greatly what the subject it, as long as the context is intimate and the story is told for its own sake, not forced to serve merely as the vehicle for an idea. The tone of the story need not be solemn. The darker aspects of life need not be ignored. But I think intimacy is indispensable – a feeling that derives from the listener’s trust and a storyteller’s certain knowledge of his subject and regard for his audience.

[Do I, as a writer, ever feel certain knowledge of my subject? Is that essential? What relationship might there be between this idea and Camus's: I have nothing to offer but my confusion? Does a lack of 'certain knowledge' lead to the writing of stories that evoke a different response in readers? What kind of response, or responses, are the natural result of stories written from a place of doubt, of uncertainty?]

Illustration by Charles Mikolaycak

Loving a child is a dangerous thing. I think I knew this at the beginning, with my first daughter, when they laid her in my arms. But then again, not really. You can know things and not know them at the same time. I don’t know how this can be true, but I believe that it is so.

In order to take her home, I had to not look too hard at how dangerous it was to love her.

How can I say how dangerous that love is? How can I articulate what it’s like to stand in the ruins of your parenting?

I think often of the story of Tam Lin, whose true love must save him from the Queen of the Faeries. If she doesn’t, Tam Lin will be paid as a tithe – as a sacrifice – to the Lords of Hell. In order to rescue him, Tam Lin’s love must tear him from the arms of the Faerie Queen as she passes by on the Faerie Ride on All Hallows Eve.

That is hard enough, but when she catches him, she must hold him. All night. And all through that night he shifts and changes, into all manner of snarling, raging, hurling, furious beasts. All manner of strangenesses. All manner of monsters. She must hold him tight, until finally he becomes a burning coal. This coal she must throw into the well, from which he will emerge his own true self. Saved.

I can feel the heat of that coal in my hand. The way it burns through the skin as she carries it to the well. The way it marks her.

In the legend, Tam Lin’s lover is assured that though he may take the form of all manner of beasts during the night, he will not harm her.

This is not true of a child. A child is a weapon you fashion from your own blood and bone. A weapon formed perfectly to wound you as no other ever will. And the Faerie Queene may be an addiction your child cannot shake, literally or figuratively. Your child may not so readily give up his grip on her when you reach out and haul them from the saddle. The Queene is, after all, beautiful, magical, eternal. Dangerous, yes, but intoxicatingly so.

And still you must hold them. And love them, until the night is over and they are a burning coal in your hand.

Until they are returned to their true form.

I have a new story in the December issue of Fantasy Magazine. The magazine is online, so you can get the issue online and read an interview about the story as well on December 5. The magazine is a little unusual and innovative in its format. Each week they publish one story and one interview, which you can read online, or you can purchase the whole issue as an ebook.

Go here, to take a peek.

When there are writers like this in the world. People, thinkers, feelers. Why bother interjecting, commenting, writing.

This is what there is to say. And this is how to say it.

I’ve been a bit slow and thin on the posting of late. Things are a bit busy and hectic around here. I hope to be more settled soon, and back posting.

In the meantime, I’ve got a story coming out very soon in Aeon Press’s Box of Delights anthology, alongside a whole bunch of other wonderful writers. The book has gone to press; here’s a sneak peek at the cover:

Launched! http://johnrichardkenny.com/2011/11/09/launch-of-box-of-delights/

Sometimes, I love reading the weekend paper. This is from an article by Lance Richardson in the travel section of SMH. The article is about visiting a working ranch in Montana:

Later, recognising my struggle to fully command the horse, a fellow rider pulls up beside me and says in that vague way of the cowboy: “There is a void between a man and a horse. That void will be filled, either by the man or by the horse. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”

 

The best thing about being a chair at a writers festival is that free books arrive in the post. That, and the opportunity to talk to some wonderful writers about their craft, and participate in one of the friendliest writers festivals in Australia.

In the last week, the following lovely books have arrived in my inbox, and I’m busily reading them all and taking notes in preparation for the panel in the early evening of Saturday, 10 September.

Kate Morton The Distant Hours

Nick Earls The Fix

S J Watson Before I Go To Sleep