#tim winton

[ragazzoarcano]

“Alla fine ci trasformiamo tutti in qualcosa... ricordi, ombre, preoccupazioni, sogni.”

— Tim Winton

[whilereadingandwalking]

I read Cloudstreet, a modern Australian classic by Tim Winton about two down-on-their-luck families who end up living in the same big ramshackle, haunted home, beginning in Brisbane (someone had misinformed me and told me it was set there) and then throughout the long plane ride home. Now, I liked a lot about it. I liked the surrealist touches, the premonitions and warnings and dreams. I liked the flinty Oriel, a mother and a hard worker, and her soft husband Lester; I liked the journey of young Quick. It's a family epic about two families shaped by tragedies. It's compelling even when sometimes long-winded.

But ultimately, I really struggled with the core character: Fish. The Lamb family's world changes when a tragic accident leaves the favorite son, Fish, mentally disabled. Other characters' stories and journeys are built upon this tragedy. But he also has seemingly magical abilities. He "knows" things, he can talk to the family pig and to the ghosts of the house, he appears to characters in dreams and some version of him is narrating our novel. He is described too often in a very dehumanizing way (was a scene of his brother sobbing as he cleans Fish up after he shit himself necessary to the plot?) and Rose's crush on him becomes a ridiculous childhood fantasy transferred onto his brother instead.

Most upsettingly (spoilers), the ending of the two families, the two mothers, seeming to heal and come together in the house, seems to hinge on his suicide. It's been hinted at throughout the book—when Fish almost drowned, but was resurrected, he felt disappointed to be taken from the water, as if there was something wrong in his rebirth, and he's craved the water ever since. His purposeful drowning is written almost as a correction, a completion of what had been hanging over the Lamb family all this time. It is a release for him and his family—which is extremely troubling.

We can add to that a mysterious black man/spirit/ghost who shows up at random times solely to hand out sage advice or warning. One of the ghosts of the house is an indigenous girl who was killed in the midst of a colonizing, imperialist re-education project. These brown presences haunt the families of Cloudstreet, perhaps a metaphor for colonization's legacies, but mostly an uncomfortable magical-negro style presence instead. The women are...ok, Oriel being the best written of them. The male characters are interesting and complex but they too have their holes.

Ultimately, if it had had a different ending for Fish, I might have been able to better balance the flaws of this book with its successes, but it's impossible in the end. A shame, because a lot in this book was really promising.

Intense content warnings for ableism, suicide. Warnings also for violence, disordered eating, child death, substance abuse/addiction.

[scottelkartwork]

ARTWORK

Laura Jones

Sliding doors, 2024

Tim Winton, 2024

Sulman Prize 2024, Archibald Prize 2024. Art Gallery of New South Wales, Australia.

Self-portraiture allows me to capture moments of vulnerability and wonder in everyday settings. Sliding doors was painted at the start of a new relationship. I adopted the pose of Pierre Bonnard's wife, Marthe, in his 1932 work The bathroom. The mirror reflected the bedroom of my apartment. This equalised the image plane, allowing me to capture a familiar place - and body - from a different perspective. The small picture of domestic life collides with the big picture of the sublime.

In 2016, Laura Jones undertook an artist residency to study the bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef, leading to her exhibition Bleached. Afterwards, she met acclaimed author and conservationist Tim Winton at an environmental advocacy event.

‘I was amazed by the humility of this great novelist, who has enchanted generations of Australian readers,’ says Jones, a four-time Archibald finalist who is also in this year’s Sulman Prize.

‘Last year, I watched his ABC documentary, Ningaloo Nyinggulu, about the fight to save Ningaloo Reef. It was beautiful and terrifying. In a speech, Tim said the lack of action on climate change hasn’t been challenged enough in the arts. I was stunned to discover a portrait of Tim had never been a finalist in the Archibald Prize. Then I found out why – he was a reluctant subject,’ says Jones.

‘When I flew to Perth for a sitting, the Great Barrier Reef was suffering its fifth mass bleaching event in eight years. Tim was warm and witty. We spoke about the historical relationship between printmaking and political activism. I approached his portrait as if it was a monotype, using thin brushstrokes and letting the paint bleed across the canvas like ink into paper. Dreamy yet direct.’

What I connect with…

I love the colours and gestural strokes in Laura Jones’s work. Her Sulman entry captivated me as soon as I entered the space. The Archibald entry not so much, but both did show up the others around them. So beautiful and light and fresh.

[ferndaughter]

got that severe post-menstrual apathy;;;;;; might sell all my belongings and take off to the coast and live my life like im in a tim winton novel for a couple years. all leaves and grit and tits and empty beer cans and the wandering spirit of grief

[fourorfivemovements]

Films Watched in 2023:

21. Blueback (2022) - Dir. Robert Connolly

[ihaveasolutionbutyouwontlikeit]

Juice, by Tim Winton.

A book with no chapters and many truths.

The meatiest book I have read in a number of years and I really truly enjoyed all 513 of it's pages.

Spoilers ahead as I like to write out sentences and paragraphs that draw me to quote them to then digitally note them, if only for that singular enjoyable moment of noting them down with a nice pen on some nice paper and then relive it by putting it here

Having common interest isn't the same as having interests in common.

Virtue lies in our power, and so does vice; because where it is in our power to act,it is also in our power not to act.

Life is always hard. But didn't you think you'd been born into the best of all possible worlds?

As if saying the names of things might bring them to life. And maybe me as well. You know there's no magic in it. It can't be done, can it. But you do it anyway, because it's all you have in the face of extinction. Nattering, naming, uttering.

From each according to her ability, to each according to her needs.

Kept my head down. Met the perennial challenges...with the stoicism I'd been raised with. I tried to submit. Believed I was content. But I guess that's what you tell yourself when you're disenchanted to the point of heartbreak. Maybe it was unhealthy, that craving I'd developed. The need for action. Or the loss of a greater purpose. It's no easy thing, returning to the patterns and habits of mind you've known since childhood. But there's no shame in making soil and growing food, right? Sorrow burns so hot and bright at first. Then you tamp it down so hard you barely feel it anymore. Still, it smoulders on regardless.

You don't think things are getting harsher?... You know,exiled from the spring of living water and the shelter of the tree?

Son, she said. The cave was a refuge of course. But every refuge is a form of captivity. We were cast out from the dark into the light, emerging from beneath the earth to be on it. We came down onto the plain i n t o paradise, not from it... Plains life is not for everyone, but it's where I found myself, how I've learnt to live...

I offered her a smile. But within myself, I felt unmoored and lonely.

You keep fucking around, going sideways.

Sometimes, to go forward, you need to make a detour.

Was it worth it? To scrape the world clean even if it meant peeling off your own flesh and blood?

Maybe I'd drawn it. Or maybe my father. Perhaps as a girl she'd drawn it herself. The important thing is, she carried it. And now it's me carrying it. We've consecrated it. Made it an icon, you understand? This was her gift to me. There's love in that.

But you and me. Have we never been used as instruments? Those of us who served. We wanted something pure. We dreamt of a world of fair-dealing and open prospects. The best for the most. We were prepared to make sacrifices for it. We thought that if our suffering was for the common good, then it was just a detail along the way and now it seems the details are all we amount to. This is not despair, comrade. Because I don't despair. I won't. But that doesn't mean I don't mourn.

A wonderful no frills and no nonsense works about the fight to retain your humanity and survive in a world fighting to survive by seperating you from it. -\\|//-

[biboocat]

Juice (2024) by Tim Winton. This post apocalyptic story is something like Mad Max meets the subversive elements of the Matrix. My first complaint is the occasional incongruous literary words (like calenture, calefaction, tenebrous, nacreous) spoken by our survivalist protagonist, someone who has had little formal education. I also thought it highly improbable that he would be spilling his entire, highly detailed life history, including his involvement in a secretive resistance movement, to a complete stranger. More significantly the writing is hackneyed and repetitive. I’ve enjoyed Winton’s previous works, so this is very disappointing. What happened? Stopped at page 228 (42%). Rating 2/5.

Quotes:

Nothing works if family trumps every other consideration. Isn’t that the point of peace? Isn’t that how we’ve survived all this time? Association, cooperation, regardless of tribe and clan? Nothing changes, nothing improves, until you can see past family. Without disinterest, there’s just part as in chaos.

[asg-stuff]

What prosperous, educated westerners are experiencing is a form of paralysis, a shutting down and closing off. Frantz Fanon described something similar in Algeria in the 1950s when he observed “the tense immobility of the dominated society”. (via Our leaders are collaborators with fossil fuel colonialists. This is the source of our communal dread | Tim Winton | The Guardian)

[famousborntoday]

Timothy John Winton is an Australian writer. He has written novels, children's books, non-fiction books, and short stories. In 1997, he was named a Living Treas...

Link: Tim Winton

[harrison-abbott]

[cuttingcophater]

the deluded bullshit ive endured in circled chairs on lino floors; she had no business doing what she did but im done hating and blaming. people are fools, not monsters.

-breath by tim winton, easily his best book

[tintededges]

Breath

Australian coming of age novel about friendship, trauma and surfing I hadn’t planned on reading this book this year. I’d had a copy on my shelf for a long time after picking it up at a Lifeline Bookfair years ago, and had actually (for a change) seen the film first. However, I received a review request for a new book and it was so similar to the plot of the film, that it couldn’t just be a…

[dotmo]

“They probably don’t understand this, but it’s important for me to show them that their father is a man who dances – who saves lives and carries the wounded, yes, but who also does something completely pointless and beautiful, and in this at least he should need no explanation.” ⍆ Tim Winton ⍅

[holisticcomedian]

cinematic parallels

[ferndaughter]

rereading the turning by tim winton and thinking about how many core memories i made with random neighbourhood kids my age. when life was a blur of unrefined senses and ripped socks and luke-warm lemonade and hot tarmac. i can't remember their names but i can trace the scars they left

[sinister-things]

Baynton Nation, I have a very serious question to ask: