#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

[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]

[cantstopcutting]

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 ⍅

[tozettastone]

In the 2000s, texts we had to study in highschool were things like A Minimum of Two, Looking for Alibrandi, The Whale Rider, inevitably one (1) Shakespeare play with every iota of joy sucked out of it, 1984, Go Ask Alice, Dispossessed: A Tale of modern Rural Australia... I think in very early highschool we got some stuff like Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, too. The film we did in VCE was Lantana, which I didn't mind, but which certainly doesn't break the deeply miserable mould of these texts.

I think it's probably possible to include young adult novels that aren't extremely tiring issues novels in our curriculum? And yet having glanced through the VCE picks this year, the best they're offering you is Pride and Prejudice. I guess at least that's, like, not straight-up miserable. But it's not necessarily super relatable to the 17 year old reader.

I don't know, it always seems to me like it would be hard to learn to read as a lifelong escape from the horrors of existence if we expect school to be the place where kids acquire that skill.

[holisticcomedian]

cinematic parallels

[sinister-things]

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

[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

[moviesandmania]

CATNADO Comedy horror anthology - trailer

‘The forecast is clawful’ Catnado is a 2024 comedy horror anthology film in which world faces an onslaught of tornadoes, each unleashing hordes of deadly cats upon humanity! As chaos reigns, a disparate group of individuals have one mission: to stop this feline fury. But against such odds, and with only one life to spare per person, their battle becomes a cat-astrophic struggle for survival. And…

[randomrichards]

ONE LIFE:

An Englishman

Gave refuge to Jewish kids

Saved them from Nazis

[mori221c]

dialogue from Dirt Music by Tim Winton!