Mug Shots (20 page)

‘You're going to be what?' said my mother, when I phone her with the news. ‘You'll be the literary? It was my prayers that did it.' Try as I might, my mother persisted in using literary as a noun.

Frank Devine, soon to become the
Australian
's editor, rings from New York, sounding more serious than the roaring rollicker I knew from dinner parties. He wants my ideas in a letter straight away. ‘See ya, kid,' he signed off, with a friendliness that had a slight undertone of menace, which sent me into a depression. I'd failed at film, I'd failed at radio, I'd taken to the lifeboats with a sinking newspaper—could this be the quadrella?

The terror of the machines

About a month later—it's July 1988 now—I had lunch with Geoffrey Dutton. He was giving up the literary editorship and passing it on to me. We talked books and gossip and then, over the coffee, he asked whether I could use ‘the machines'.

‘The what?'

‘The VDTs.'

‘I'm sorry?'

‘Video Display Terminals.' No I could not. ‘Don't panic—if you can type there'll be no problem.'

But there was a problem. I couldn't type. I was a longhand man, a vestige, a fossil, and as he took me back to the office I felt afraid. The fear grew when we entered the fluorescent vastness of the newsroom, swelled as we sat down in front of a Video Display Terminal—and, as Dutton's fingers pecked at the keyboard in accordance with codes I didn't understand, terror turned to panic.

‘Don't worry,' said the good friend who'd helped me get the job. ‘I'll teach you at night when there's no one around.' Every night when I arrived for tuition, my friend would insist on going first to the Evening Star for what he called the ­theoretical work. Five or six beers later we'd go back for the practical side—but his words would go in one ear, float across to the other and
out again
.

The anxiety and the bottleneck lasted three months, partly because I'd made the job a lot harder. Dutton, with whom I was briefly apprenticed, would go in only two days a week, open drawers by now bulging with books, and assign them at speed, like a dealer with a pack of cards. For him it was a part-time job—he was a writer who did this on the side. When Frank Devine took over as editor, he asked if there was anything I wanted. A third page, I foolishly replied. Done, he boomed.

Three broadsheet pages was a frightening amount of space and it was up to me to fill it. I started a feature called ‘Behind the Book', with a writer or publisher interviewed every week, and columns from London, New York (and Sydney). The books arrived in waves—boxes and boxes of them—and I made two discoveries. Even three pages were inadequate (Frank eventually let me increase it to four) and so were a depressing number of reviewers I'd inherited.

‘Be ruthless,' said Frank—and there was no other way. The uneditable were never published, and the salvageable rewritten so comprehensively I hoped their authors would be annoyed, and refuse to contribute any further. This disposed of some but not others, and when they got no more books to review and asked why, I had to tell them, using euphemisms like ‘a new look' and ‘fresh faces'. It fooled nobody. I'd made my first enemies (apart from theatrical ones).

The book review, I now realised, was an art form in itself, and it took months to purge the pages of those who couldn't do it. A handful survived. It sounds easy, but it isn't, and I set out in search for those who might have the gift—extending from academic and literary magazines to letter writers in the broadsheets. There were discoveries—the acerbic Kathy Hunt, Gippsland's Dorothy Parker, a pungent humorist called Greg Flynn who was rapidly terminated by my successor James Hall; and disasters—the most unexpected being a prize-winning ­novelist whose copy was so bad it was a puzzle how he could have written a novel at all. He expressed himself crisply nevertheless when his review was sent back for a second time—‘Get fucked'.

But the challenge was only beginning. The right book had to be mated with the right reviewer. Out went flesh-coloured novels with embossed titles, airport fiction, cooking, dieting and self-help works, and the bafflingly obscure:
The Romance of Milk: The Story of Australian Dairying
;
Will and Codicil: The Trustee Company Story
;
From Bedpan to Trepan: Post-war Hospital Policy
. (I made all these up, but there were many of this kind.)

Literary editors operate like escort agencies. Matchings need diplomacy (is A a friend or enemy of B? Wasn't C an ex-lover of D? Didn't E once get a bad review from F?)

It didn't take long for the letters and faxes to come in (no emails, mercifully, yet). One outraged author copied the letter he'd sent to the reviewer of his book to me. ‘Dear D, I have just seen your review of my book in the
Weekend Australian
. Is this the same D who was a colleague and friend at the ABC? Goodness, what a silly old fart you have become.'

But ultimately it's always my fault. ‘Dear Barry, When I was foolish enough to ask you if you were going to review my book, I had no idea you would send it to X. Surely you must have known that X regards Henry Lawson as his personal property, and that trespassers are shown the gate? His review was motivated by spleen from beginning to end, and parts of it may be defamatory. Thanks for your help. We must have a beer sometime.'

An entire eco-system had to be mapped and mastered. As well as disgruntled authors and sacked reviewers, publishers and literary agents also circled, alert for omissions. There being no such thing as a free lunch, if either of the above took me to one, favours were implicitly expected in return. The longer and more expensive the lunch, the greater the implied obligation.
A literary
editor must be able to hold his or her liquor.

At the system's centre is the heave and bubble of Australian literary pond-life. Who are the carps, who the tadpoles? And what of the few that have made the salmon-leap to international waters, and who will henceforth regard any local criticism as small-pond envy and malice?

There were also literary lunches, arranged in partnership with large department stores, and as a result offering authors one didn't always admire. Like the absurdly popular Ken Follett, whose prose I sample before introducing him to an admiring crowd of North Shore and Eastern Suburbs matrons. I stumbled through his new novel until reaching a sex scene: ‘This was not what was supposed to happen, she thought weakly. He pushed her gently backward on the bed, and her hat fell off. This isn't right, she said feebly. He kissed her mouth, nibbling her lips gently with his own.' As a general rule, the more adverbs, the worse the writer. In four sentences, Follett had cobbled in four of them.

At another, I had to introduce Sidney Sheldon, an even more successful writer, before an even larger admiring crowd. Sheldon's novels are written in sentences like processed cheese, but have sold, according to the press release, 300 million copies (I don't believe it). Some of my incredulity must have shown when I introduced him. As I came down from the podium and he came up, he whispered, ‘You took that off the press release.' It was true—I could think of no compliments of my own—but I denied it. He had trouble fixing his features into a smile.

Pretending to enthuse (in my capacity as Literary Editor of the
Australian
) about the processed-cheese prose of US author, Sidney Sheldon.

One must also be alert for the Richler Effect. I admired the novels of the Canadian humorist (
Solomon Gursky Was Here
) and his publishers organised a lunch for him. At the table I was introduced to a small, sour figure who I assumed to be the author's father, but who turned out to be Mordecai Richler, the author himself. The open-faced forty-year-old of his new novel's jacket photo had undergone a Dorian-Gray transfor­mation into someone elderly and sullen. Maybe he was aware of the effect, because he spent most of the lunch turned away from us, puffing on smelly cheroots. And when I later met Joseph Heller, the keen-eyed kibbitzer on the
Good As Gold
flyleaf had metamorphosed into a copper-skinned Gold Coast retiree.

Though the literary editor isn't high in the newsroom pecking order (real journalists see it as a sheltered workshop) I learned to use what little power I had to delegate unpleasant assignments—especially interviewing writers. With rare exceptions (Amos Oz for one) writers are solipsists who believe their work is a nebula at the centre of the universe. (I know—I'm one myself.) The more important they think they are, the harder they play to get. Gore Vidal—the last of the American Puritans, for whom political life is irredeemably corrupted—fortunately said no. Sliding down the significance scale, Murray Bail, who's taken up residence in literature's cold store, also refused. (The literary journalist Michele Field told me that when she was doing a series of writer interviews, Bail would only consent to leave the coolroom if he could be assured he wouldn't encounter any other writer going out or coming in.)

As well as the Richler Effect, another principle soon established itself. The less the talent, the more the self-promotion. A poet sent me a monthly newsletter of his activities, expecting to get an occasional mention in Lyn Tranter's column about local literary life. When she did mention him (critically) I had a call from the offended poet. ‘I don't want to threaten you, but steps might have to be taken if something isn't done. She could well affect my chances of getting grants.' ‘Threaten away,' I said, and hung up.

His poems didn't get in either. Poetry editorship came with the job, which led to the formulation of a third literary law: the White Mice Syndrome. When our children were young, they had white mice, which, tormented by their confinement, sometimes turned on one another in a flurry of squealing. Poets, maddened by obscurity, can sometimes do the same.

Novelists and playwrights resent their more successful colleagues, but poets coalesce into hostile camps. The modernists and traditionalists hate one another, and on at least one occasion have come to blows.

All over Australia, I soon discovered, bad poetry was being written. Some aspirants couldn't even get my title right: ‘The Littery editor', ‘The Lisenary editor', ‘the overall editor of
literature
'. Some were so bad a certain majesty crept into them:

How is one to loosen up the serious

boondoggle of the species from afar?

From a Japanese poet (‘I enclose some my manuscripts and expect your good answer'):

I might w
as selfish

I might was coward

Please don't forget our life

Teardrops of elephant.

Even when a poem was published, you weren't safe. ‘Dear Barry Oakley, I have been contacted by Mr X, in relation to his poem
Apology to my Father
. I gather from Mr X that there was a misprint in the third verse, and he would like a correction published.' Sincerely, Lynne Spender, Executive Officer, Australian Society of Authors.

Exasperated limpidity

Late in 1989, two things came out—
The Craziplane
, my fourth novel, and my gallstones. While Bert Hingley, the short, dapper and sharp publisher at Hodder & Stoughton, was doing repair work on the manuscript, covering it with Post-it stickers, my doctor, the courtly Meyer Marshall, told me I was going to need some editing too.

I had resumed theatre reviewing, this time with the paper Max Suich had always wanted to publish—
The Independent Monthly
. (I'd abandoned the
Sydney Review
to protect my liver, after Christopher Pearson, increasingly cash-strapped, started paying me with cartons of Petaluma white wine.)

On my way back from Justin Fleming's play
Harold in Italy
,
I suffered
stitch-like pains, and had trouble walking. Was it post-theatrical dialogue poisoning, or something worse? At Meyer Marshall's insistence, I took the treadmill test at St Vincent's, where Dick Hall lay recuperating from a heart attack—sustained, aptly enough, at a book launch (perhaps after learning he had to pay for his drinks).

The heart was okay. Next came the ultrasound, and when Marshall inspected the results he found them so remarkable he called in his colleague to look. The gallbladder was stuffed like Kerry Packer's wallet with six large stones.

‘You should be in agony,' he said, ‘and yet all you get are pains while walking.'

I'd now agreed to some—but not all—of Bert Hingley's editorial suggestions, and accepted the cover art (the playwright Frank Minogue, fat and fluorescent, flying over night-time Carlton). Would the book come out before the bladder?

No. My wife sent me to Grace Brothers for hospital pyjamas, and I met James Murray, the
Australian
's Religious Affairs writer. ‘Oh,' he said, when I told him why I was there. ‘My father had to have his gallbladder out, and he bled to death on the operating table.' I thanked him for his Christian con­solation. Rose Cresswell too had encouraging words. ‘Don't worry, you'll have intense pain for three days, and then you'll pick up.'

At the hospital, I'm told to wait until 4 pm. There were nine hours to fill in. I had secreted a valium—forbidden before surgery—and now took it. Eventually I was trolleyed in, the men in green masks loomed over me, and I lost consciousness. Rose Cresswell was right. There was serious pain afterwards, especially when I coughed or laughed. On these rare occasions I pressed a pillow against my gut. The incision looked enormous. I was stitched up like a sherrin.

The Craziplane
came out a month later, launched by Peter Carey in the upper room of the Bellevue Hotel, in Paddington. How slim it looked, compared to the fatness of his
Illywhacker
! It's an ideal place for a launch—there's a bar, and there's only one entrance, which makes it hard for freeloaders to slip away without buying the book. The furtive departure of two old friends was duly noted.

I'll be brief.
The Craziplane
is the story of Frank Minogue, Australia's greatest living playwright, his actress wife, and Michael, an aspiring writer who's attempting Frank's ­biography (fails) and an affair with his wife (succeeds).

Had my book, I asked in my thank you speech, had a hospital experience similar to my own? Bert Hingley had been handed a meaty 220 pages, only for it to come out at a malnourished 141. Like me, it went in as rump steak and came out a diet biscuit. Even an epigraph would have helped by adding a page, and too late, I had one ready, taken from a bottle of Lambrusco recently consumed. ‘If you are expecting an exasperated limpidity, you will not be disappointed.'

The reviews were good (‘may well be the most delightful Australian novel to appear this year'—Judith White, Sydney
Sun Herald
) with one exception. I'd left the job of finding a reviewer for the pages I edited to Frank Devine, and he chose a splenetic New Zealander who took exception to the sex scenes and was generally not amused. Strange to read a critical review of one's own book in one's own pages.

Slight mishap after Frank Devine's farewell lunch.