This slightly delayed newsletter is coming to you from the Emirates lounge at Dubai airport, as I await my flight home from the Middle East. I’ll save any reflections on Dubai for another occasion, as I’m still digesting the experiences of a few hectic days. In the meantime, there are issues closer to home, such as the NSW State government trying to rush through a ‘consultation’ that will ensure the destruction of the existing Powerhouse Museum buildings, regardless of concerted opposition from those who actually care about the place.
This is a particularly nasty business as it is taking place during the ‘caretaker’ period before a State election in which the Coalition has every chance of being evicted from office. If there is an incoming Labor government – and that remains a big ‘if’ – it will be faced with a bunch of signed contracts and legally binding agreements that may have to be untangled in court. Call me a cynic, but I suspect it will give Labor an excuse to allow the project to proceed without paying heed to so many years’ worth of protest. I’m still waiting to see the ALP’s policies on arts and heritage, which don’t seem to be high priorities.
The other topic that cropped up this week was The Monthly’s long piece on my old school friend, John Hughes, whose novel, The Dogs, has been revealed as a collage of other writers’ words – an act of plagiarism so concerted and deliberate that the authors of the piece sounded vaguely respectful, as if it might be a revolutionary literary strategy that gives John a taste of immortality. This may very well be true, but it’s a sad sort of fame born from coldly ripping off other writers.
Maybe I’m unrealistically romantic about this, but I’d prefer to admire the talent and inspiration of the original authors – from Tolstoy to F. Scott Fitzgerald to Svetlana Alexievich, and on, and on – rather than an ingenious work of cut & paste that has embarrassed those who read the book but never saw the connections. While some may believe John has heeded St. Paul’s advice that if you must sin, sin with conviction, the whole thing feels more sordid than heroic. I’m not exactly a moralist, but the affair has left me with the feeling there is something morally abhorrent in this act of uber-plagiarism.
As every writer knows, it’s hard but necessary to be original, or to find a new way of saying things that great writers of the past have already said. To simply borrow slabs of other people’s work is a way of removing the really challenging aspect of writing, replacing it with a display of erudition and diligent editing. On one hand it’s a literary death wish, on the other a backhanded grab for attention. John Hughes knows only too well that in Paradise Lost, Satan is far more interesting than God, and he has wilfully signed up to the Devil’s party. If I were searching for my own poor but precise word to describe his strategy – it’s creepy.
Some may say the same about the subject of this week’s art column, Peter Booth, but I’d prefer to call it visionary, albeit in a scary way. Booth’s show at TarraWarra is a triumph of the imagination, filled with images pulled directly from the quagmire of the unconscious. I’ve always admired these powerful, dark paintings, but what’s pleasing is the way they have maintained their power over the decades. Booth’s work of the 1980s is as shocking today as it was at first appearance. Will we be saying the same, in 40 years time, about some of today’s curatorial favourites?
The move being reviewed is Empire of Light, a tremendously touching film about human frailty, and the cinema. Or so I thought. Looking at the way the movie has been received by most errr… critics, I was amazed at their hostility and condescension. I don’t know what director, Sam Mendes, did to earm such emnity. Would they have preferred him to keep making James Bond movies? In a Bond film the question of originality doesn’t loom large, as the formula is almost unbreakable. Empire of Light is a far more personal, more deeply felt exercise. More strength, I say, to those poor fools who believe it’s still possible to add a few more drops to the great pool of art rather than reaching for the pumps.