The Best Australian Stories 2010 (17 page)

Reviewed by Penny McFarlane

October 23 marked the second anniversary of literary critic Peter Crawley's bizarre and violent death at his Sydney home. In a recent press release Hazlitt-Ruskin explained that they felt enough time had passed that they could release the first, long-delayed book of Crawley's reviews and essays. Crawley himself was engaged in the editing of the book when his life was cut short. This edition collects all of his important criticism from the
Sydney Review
, the
Age
and the
Sydney Morning Herald
, and the lectures and speeches he occasionally gave at book launches and signings. The title of the collection is taken from a remark by Brendan Behan: ‘Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how it's done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves.' Crawley often jokingly referred to himself as a ‘eunuch,' though many women who encountered him in Sydney's literary scene from the 1970s to the 1990s would be able to give the lie to that. (In the interests of disclosure, I should say that Crawley once made a pass at me at a book reading in Melbourne in 1988. At this time the
fatwa
against Salman Rushdie had just been pronounced, and I can still clearly recall a drunken Crawley, at the end of his speech, declaring that he had heard the title of Rushdie's next work was
Buddha Is a Fat Bastard
. In the ensuing storm, only an abject public apology saved his job at the
Sydney Review
.)

Since his death, Peter Crawley's name has become irrevocably linked with that of Frank Harmer. The editors of
The Eunuch in
the Harem
have acknowledged this by placing the twenty pages of Crawley's writings about Harmer at the front of the book. The section opens with the review of
The Grass Cadillac
from 1999 and ends with a dismissive footnote in an essay on Tim Winton from 2006.

To give these writings pride of place in the collection is to do Crawley a grave disservice. His criticism of Harmer, whilst amongst his most scabrous, was certainly not his best. For that the reader should turn to the second section, titled ‘American Lives.' Here we can find many unique insights into Bellow, Updike and Mailer (who, incidentally, called Crawley a ‘Limey asshole' on the one occasion they met, in New York.) Crawley's analysis of the
Rabbit
tetralogy has been reprinted several times to great acclaim in the US, but is virtually unknown here, and his monograph on Bernard Malamud was highly praised by Harold Bloom. It is a shame to note that Crawley's treatment of Australian authors is spottier. Too often his praise is faint and over-leavened with sarcasm. Still, his half-dozen essays on Patrick White should be required reading for anyone with the slightest interest in Australian literature.

However, it was not Crawley the scholar, but Crawley the self-proclaimed eunuch who wrote such guiltily entertaining book reviews for the
Sydney Review
. In the longest section of the book, ‘A Pig at the Pastry Cart' (another allusion to critics), Crawley selected the fifty of his reviews he felt were most enjoyable to read. Highlights include his opinion on the Booker Prize-winning
Life
of Pi
(‘It is so terrible I doubt there would even be a place for it in Borges' Infinite Library') and his devastating, three-word summing up of Daphne du Maurier: ‘middle-class, middle-brow, middling.'

Crawley's harsh reviews of Raymond Carver's stories are surprising, considering the fact that the two men were friends, with Carver even dedicating one of his final stories, ‘Buffalo,' to Crawley. But Crawley's dismissal of Carver has a refreshing quality in an era when the American has been hailed as the modern Chekhov. One passage in particular is worth quoting in full:

[Carver] followed Hemingway's idea of the story as iceberg, that is, only the top eighth of life and emotion would be shown, the rest hidden underneath. But in [Carver's] stories, one can't help thinking that the iceberg is more of an ice cube.

Pleasingly, it is Crawley's evisceration of popular fiction that takes up the most space. His dismissal of Stephen King is brilliantly off-hand. ‘To me, his novels are more endearing than scary. King is like a child leaping out from behind the sofa and shouting, “Boo!” We don't have the heart to tell him he didn't frighten us.'

As I have said, Crawley's criticism of Frank Harmer is not his best, but it is a sad thing to contemplate that it will probably be his best read. Crawley never envisaged any mention of Harmer in his book. The section ‘Thoughts on Frank Harmer' was added after his death. It does not make great reading. The original review of
The Grass Cadillac
was certainly cruel, if undoubtedly accurate. Harmer might even have taken it as an honour to be tarred with the same brush that had spattered W.H. Auden and Seamus Heaney. He was obviously not aware that a review by Crawley, positive or not, would certainly help sell his small book of poetry. Similarly, if Crawley had been aware of Harmer's history of mental instability, I have no doubt he wouldn't have reviewed
The Grass Cadillac
in the first place. The accounts of their first meeting at a poetry reading are various. Harmer claimed he caught Crawley leering at his wife and assaulted him.

Crawley maintained the attack was entirely unprovoked, though considering that Emma Harmer left her husband for the critic, many would tend to accept Harmer's account. Crawley had already handed in his review of Harmer's short-story collection
The Dog and the Lamp-post
before the incident at the festival, though it had not yet gone to press. (Incidentally, he was annoyed that Harmer had inadvertently stolen the title he had wished to use for his book of criticism.) Crawley subsequently claimed he did not change a word of his review, even in light of the broken leg he received. This is true, but it is not entirely to Crawley's credit. As he recuperated in hospital, Emma Harmer, on one of her frequent visits, had informed him that her husband was being treated for schizophrenia. Knowing this, Crawley let stand the reference comparing Harmer to a lunatic daubing filth on the walls of a madhouse. This was a despicably cruel act from a normally kind-hearted man. Crawley could never forgive Harmer for beating and humiliating him in public, and returns to him again and again in his work in the weeks after the incident. For example, in a review of Pat Reid's
The Raphael Cipher
Crawley says, ‘Bad as [this book] is, it has had the good fortune to be published after Frank Harmer's
The Dog and the Lamp-post
, ensuring it will not, at least, be the worst book this year.'

Eventually, Crawley's editor and close friend, David Phillips, banned him from making any further references to Harmer in the journal. By that time, of course, a scandal had erupted over
Ariel's Daughter
. The original review, at close to 10,000 words, was rejected by Phillips, the two men almost coming to blows when Crawley realised Phillips had cut 96 per cent of the review. (Phillips later destroyed all copies of the longer review, fearing it would irrevocably damage his friend's reputation.) Even in the shortened form, the review is excruciating, reading like a 400-word chat-up line. And yet it must have had the desired effect, as soon after it was published Emma Harmer fled to Africa with Crawley. Her husband, pursuing them to the airport, was arrested for brandishing a knife at the boarding gates.

It is the great irony of Peter Crawley's life that he courted controversy yet married banality. But there can be no doubt that he was deeply in love with Emma Harmer. Only a man besotted would have carefully recorded for posterity her asinine travel observations in
An African Honeymoon
.

Controversially, Crawley's last, unfinished piece, the wry essay ‘Where Is That Great Australian Novel?,' has been included in the collection. I believe that here, at least, the editors made the correct decision. The twelve pages that survive are amongst the best Crawley ever wrote. Sadly, we will never know the answer to the question he set himself. As he was putting the finishing touches to the essay, a deranged Frank Harmer broke into the critic's house. He found Crawley in his study, bludgeoned him into unconsciousness with a glass paperweight, then stuffed the last eight pages of the essay down Crawley's throat, choking him to death.

Peter Crawley once said, pessimistically, ‘The good writing about writing will go first, and then the good writing itself.' This collection of good writing about writing has not sold well, and the publishers have scrapped plans for a second volume. I suspect this will be the last we will see of Crawley on the bookshelves, except perhaps in the form of posterity he most detested, that of three or four lines in a book of quotations.

And the good writing itself? Crawley's widow Emma recently changed her name to Emma Crawley-Harmer. Her autobiography,
The Poetess of Sadness
(with its lengthy subtitle,
One Woman's Extraordinary
Journey Through Marriage, Infidelity, Madness and Murder
) reputedly sold for a six-figure sum, and was released by Picador last week. While the reviews were overwhelmingly negative, the book has debuted at number two on the bestsellers list, outsold only by
The Dog and the Lamp-post
, now in its seventh printing.

Harvest

The Yarra

Nam Le

Hours before sunrise my body's already soaked with sweat, as though in anticipation of the real heat. Melbourne's in drought. The city a plain of dust and fire. I wake amidst dreams of Saturday sports as a schoolboy, shin guards and box chafing where the sheets have twisted; noise, collision down the pitch as faraway as a deeper dream. There are Tupperware containers at half-time, frozen wedges of orange. Then a sudden switch and charge, players all around me, the rising breathing in my ears – I am sprinting, dread-filled, from here to there, and here the ball is kicked to there, and there it's booted – at the very moment I've chased it down – somewhere else. The sun is on my face and then it is dark. My brother, my blood and bones, confessor and protector, came in last night, he must be sleeping downstairs, and – as always when he comes – I find my hand on my heart and my mind wide open and wheeling.

I get up and wash my face. The water from the cold faucet is warm, and smells of dirt. Downstairs, a reflexive propriety forestalls me looking at the sleeping form on the couch, and then I look. My brother, Thuan, comes bringing no clues where he's been. As always, he lies on his back. His mouth is open, his eyelids violent with their shuddered thoughts, and even under the thin sheet I can see the heavy limbs, flat and parallel as though lying in state. He has a powerful body.

I make some coffee in a plunger – not bothering to keep the noise down – and take it outside to the back deck. Surrounded by cicada song I sit down, stare out. Something is wrong. Why else would he have come? I wonder where he's been but then why does it matter? Away is where he's been. I think of his last visit three years ago, then Baby's visit a few months later – how quiet and uncertain she was, how unlike his girlfriend from those rowdier times. Before leaving she hesitated, then asked for thirty dollars; I gave it to her and never saw her again.

Against the darkness, other faces from that shared past occur to my mind with stunning vividness. Even closer, thicker, than the dark is the heat. Another scorcher on the way. Somewhere out there a forest is burning, and a family crouching under wet towels in a bathtub, waiting as their green lungs fill with steam and soot muck. I test the coffee's temperature. As often happens at this time of morning I find myself in a strange sleep-bleared funk that's not quite sadness. It's not quite anything. Through the trees below, the river sucks in the lambency of city, creeps it back up the bank, and slowly, in this way, as I have seen and cherished it for years, the darkness reacquaints itself into new morning.

He's there now, I sense him, but I say nothing. Minutes pass. A line of second lightness rises into view beside the river: the bike trail.

‘You still got my old T-shirt,' Thuan says. Even his voice sounds humid. He comes out, barefoot and bare-chested, stepping around my punching bag without even feinting assault.

‘Sleep okay?'

‘If you mean did I drown in my own sweat.'

He's feeling talkative. ‘You came in late,' I say. ‘There's a fan.'

He pads around the deck, inspecting it. Since he was last here I've jerry-rigged a small workout area, a tarpaulin overhang. I painted the concrete underfoot in bright, now faded, colours. He lowers himself onto the flat bench. Then under his breath he says, ‘All right,' as though sceptically conceding a point. He shakes his head. ‘This bloody drought,' he says.

‘I know, I've been going down there,' I say, nodding at the river. ‘Bringing water up – for the garden and whatnot.'

‘Why?'

‘You know.' He's making me self-conscious. ‘The herbs and stuff.'

‘I mean why not just use the hose?'

I glance at him. Where has he been that there aren't water restrictions? Then I catch his meaning: who cared about the water restrictions? What could they do to you?

A shyness takes hold of me, then I say, ‘I dreamt about Saturday sports.'

To my surprise he starts laughing. He lifts up his face, already sweat-glossed, and bares his mouth widely. Yes, he's changed since I saw him last. ‘Remember when you broke that guy's leg?

And they wanted us to forfeit?'

I tell him I remember, though in my memory it was he, and not I, who had done the leg breaking. We'd played on the same team some years. For a confusing moment I'm shuttled back into my morning's dream: the brittle sky, the sun a pale yolk broken across it. Then the specific memory finds me – the specific faces – the injured kid with what seemed an expression of short-breathed delight, as if someone had just told a hugely off-colour joke; the odd, elsewhere smirk playing on our father's lips as he came onto the field to collect us, batting off the coach's earnest officialese, the rising rancour of the opposing parents.