The Dreaming Spires

Oxford

It was easy to think of the dreaming spires, of places that were somewhere else, any excuse to escape the dread that regularly overtook every waking step. And yet there was nothing that had changed. When he was growing up the world was going to end in 1972. According to the Mayan calendar it was going to end in December 2012. But as pundits around the world observed; it did no such things. But there were many who observed how quickly the zeitgeist, the eternal angst, had drifted into a kind of eternal now; that what had once seemed so important was no longer. That the problems, the desires, the troubles were rapidly shifting into something else. And so it seemed. The world had not ended; but something had.

He had been on the island of Phuket and day followed day in a lazy swirl which was new to him. He wasn't dealing with people used to a life of professional heat. Instead they sat in cafes and open air squares and dawdled away coffees a damn sight more expensive than almost any you could find on the mainland. Every glimpse of melancholy was an opportunity to confide in someone else. If there was any personal agony involved he couldn't see it. So some things were hard; but they didn't see it. Strive to survive. 

And then Ko Samui.

As one of the people in a restaurant explained; they weren't from Thailand either and none of the customers were from Thailand and so there wasn't much point in trying to speak Thai. Just speak English like everywhere else.

If they felt like their country had been stolen from under them; it was an easy sentiment to understand.

Mai Sabai, not relaxed, Chalaht, clever, Mai Chalaht, not relaxed, Mai Pen Rai, never mind, Arai G'dai, whatever, even in the middle distance the voices kept up their wavering mockery. He wasn't going to do anything to change the script. Mai Kow Jai Mon Thai, Not understand Thailand. He was neither blind, stupid or deaf, not yet. And while ever the derision lasted, nor would he be at peace. 

Leave him be, leave him be, let him get on with getting his life back together.

The topsy turvy year of 2012 was coming to a close; and he would never have cared, never have known, if they hadn't laid it out so clearly for him. There amidst the false trails lay all the answers. He could haunt the place but in the end didn't care. There was going to be a reckoning, but it wasn't for him. If they had ever been destined, it was not for him. If they had ever been in love, it was not with him. And so, when the fish came jumping out of the sea, when a myriad of stories came home  to roost, when every thread and every path laid down came finally back to where they belonged; he would be standing there laughing. Because he was still alive against all the odds. And he smiled magnanimously. Thanks for the ride, he waved, with all the grandiosity of the defective. 

Show no fear, he advised. They don't understand it; and are frightened of what they don't understand.

"Thai people not your friend," the pharmacist on Surawong warned him, eyeing the young man standing outside waiting for him.

"I know," he replied, laughing disingenuously. "I learn the hard way."

The pharmacist looked at him curiously, as if the depth of stupidity of this particular foreigner remained beyond any depths of stupidity he had previously witnessed.

Never mind, he thought, as he paid for his purchase and made his way outside. Thailand is an ever fascinating, intriguing, often beautiful, always challenging place. He hadn't intended to stay so long. But one way or another; he was still there. The acrid smell of the dense traffic swept through tired lungs; and he cheerfully greeted the young man he knew perfectly well was deceiving him.   

  

The Stories They Want To Believe

They believed what they wanted to believe. It was always thus. You'll be bashed if you ask the wrong person where a gay bar is, the waiter warned, offering himself up at the same time.

The next day a moto cie driver pointed to a nearby soi when he asked the same question in a neighbouring town, then offered himself up for 500 baht. 

Five hundred baht and my wallet, he thought, declining the offer.

The UK and Australian embassies had joined with the Thai government in warning against tourist scams scarring the reputation of the holiday resorts.

Although there was little visual correlation, the scenes on Phuket and Ko Samui, where he had gone after becoming tired of Bangkok and the endless grimy pursuit of his pursuers, the howling of the mob, the derision of the common man, demonstrating, if nothing else, how utterly corrupt, vindictive, dishonest and unprincipled were those who sought to ridicule him.

Without conscience, without taste, without scruple, sometimes he could think of no way out but retreat.

But retreat to where?

What doesn't kill us makes us stronger, went the old saying, and thus it had proved to be. 

They had proved they could manipulate public opinion, as if that was a difficult achievement. They had proved that truth mattered not one jot to them. They had proved they were prepared to ridicule and malign anyone who got in their way. Anyone who objected to being robbed, cheated, maligned. Their lies were endless, these scumbags. Let them lie, he had always thought, they only expose themselves. But there were times when he wondered how far they would take it.

Will they kill him? one of the voices asked.

If they can, another answered.

The exposure for all to see of the corrupt liaisons between the bar owners and the police had been exposed for all to see; or those who cared to look.

But that didn't mean he had won any fans, or protection. All that did was leave him well out on a limb; with only the occasional friend to provide a bridge to safety.

Same as it ever was, same as it ever was, water flowing underground, he repeated to his friend Ross, quoting the words from Talking Heads. Remember that song? he asked.

Yes, Ross replied. It's the same all over the world. People don't like gays. You're in a minority. There just aren't many services for people like you. Why can't you just get off with a girl, like everybody else?

I don't know, he shrugged.

It was Christmas Day, 2012. He had lived more than 40 years longer than he had ever expected to do. And if the longevity gene in his family had been passed to him, would live a damn sight longer yet.

He watched the girls dancing on the bar come stage; scene after scene. They outnumbered customers a dozen to one.

The tourists hadn't come this year; despite all the industry's optimistic forecasts. 

While the Red Shirts had bashed a hole in the tourist industry in 2010 there were other factors at play, poor economies in Europe and America, Thailand's increasingly tatty reputation for tourist scams and an AIDS infested sex industry. Six hundred thousand Thais had already died. Another 400,000 were infected, according to the latest official statistics. If they had died of anything else, if it was anybody other than sex workers, largely derived from the urban and rural poor, who were dying, there would have been a national outcry and massive government programs in place. As it was, the latest statistics were just another news story in the blizzard of information that had become everybody's life.

One brief moment, one brief glance in a crowded bar, had changed not just his life but a number of others.

And here amidst the lost, bruised for sure, it was obvious they had done more damage to themselves than they could ever do to him. A single individual, an agent of change, had only so much power. But tendrils reached everywhere. They had no idea who or what they were dealing with. False trails lay everywhere. Yes, he had been damaged, but so had they. 

Leave him alone, the official pleaded, leave him alone to get his life back together. 

Chalaht mak, very clever, no good for Thailand, Mon Thai, the voices said, the derision wavering into puzzlement.

You do it to everyone, rob, cheat, steal, lie, this is what you call, in your conscience free zone, tahm nahm, work. 

Open yourself up to the world; and the world judges you according to its own values. Not yours. A double cross is a double cross. The honor amongst thieves that operates in the West does not operate in Thailand for one simple reason. You are a falang, or farang, the pronunciation varying across the country. You will never be Thai. You will never fit in. They don't want you to fit in. They laugh at their own treachery, don't believe a word they say. And laugh at the suckers who fall their lies. 

It was what it was, he shrugged, and kept on walking. 

Pleasure Everywhere

"Where have you been," his recent friend asked of another Italian asked who climbing off his motor bike.
We were outside a Family Mart on the island of Phuket.
"Ko Samui," the man, short, bald headed, very Italian, replied.
"Enjoy?"
"OK. There is pleasure every. My God."
He had escaped the echoing corridors, the surveillance, the derision of Bangkok, the halls surrounded with a laughter he did not feel.
He had lingered in Bangkok, Khron Tep, for days, perhaps it was months, working or recovering, his prolonged sobriety punctured by increasingly rare increasingly wild benders.
Why so keen on the setup?
"He's going down," one of the voices said in yet another crowded discotheque. "That book."
"Leave him be. Let him get his life back together. It's what he says himself. He would like to sue you for stress. Leave him alone."
He had repeatedly pointed out: "They make their own story."
"For him, it's five minutes to midnight," one of the voices stated.
But it wasn't that many days before another asked: "Who is this guy?"
He had merely questioned someone about seed banks in response to a long ago story about Glasgow. What, they thought he didn't know about these things?
All was well in an infinitely strange way; as if he had escaped the pressures of the past; as if nothing could equal what he had already gone through.
There was no mercy.
There would never be any mercy.
Among those he met.  For the people with whom he lingered.
He didn't know whether to stay or go.
He said it repeatedly to confuse the people who trailed him, laying yet another false path on their highway to hell.
But in fact it was genuine enough.
There were "pathways", that phrase the public servants he had become acquainted with during his decades as a journalist were so fond of using in their documentation.
Their relentless seas of paperwork.
Of confusion.
In his case there was no clear pathway opening up ahead, as it usually did.
He didn't know how to enjoy; had never thought or sought such an outcome.
Here on the island there was something of the same feel of his own city, as if it could all be washed away in an instant; as the tsunami had proved.
The Impossible, the story of a British family who survived the tsunami, so white washed you would have thought no a single Thai person had died, is running in the cinemas. He wasn't about to see it twice, although he liked to see movies twice. You saw different things the second time round.
"It's not that sort of movie," one of the 12 steppers commented, idling away their idle days on the island, as if they had never worked, never kept up a professional pace, never crammed too many things into one day.
They were a little like the welfare dependent but with their own means and abandoned to luxury: to do one hing a day was more than enough.
He reached out across time and space, fell in the ditch, laughed at the sky. It was the same everywhere. We are all standing on the earth. But only some of us are looking at the stars.
Or as the Daily Literary Quote from Roman Payne declared, those who "revel in the voluptuousness of the life that surrounds them."

THE BIGGER STORY:

AUSTRALIA'S most senior Catholic, George Pell, has used his traditional Christmas message to apologise for the crimes of Christian officials, priests and teachers, declaring he feels the community's "shock and shame" at revelations of wrongdoing.

Cardinal Pell spoke of Christ's message of peace but acknowledged there was less peace - and sometimes no peace - where there was evil.

DOCUMENT: Pell's Christmas message

"My heart, the hearts of all believers, of all people of goodwill, go out to all those who cannot find peace at this time, especially those who have suffered at the hands of fellow Christians; Christian officials, priests, religious, teachers," he said.

"I am deeply sorry this has happened. It is deeply contrary to Christ's teachings and I too feel the shock and shame across the community at these revelations of wrong doing and crimes."

RECOMMENDED COVERAGE

Cardinal Pell's Christmas message

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Believe it or not

Cardinal Pell's message comes as the federal government prepares its terms of reference for a national royal commission into abuse within institutions, due next year. He said faith in goodness and love was needed to cope with disasters and hurt.

The message of Jesus Christ, he said, was a simple "great truth" open to all and rooted in history.

Ahead of the most celebrated day on the Christian calendar, commemorating the birth of Jesus more than 2000 years ago, spiritual leaders reminded followers Christmas was a time for reflection and hope.

Anglican Church of Australia Primate, Archbishop Phillip Aspinall, said it was a time of celebration, new imagination and potential renewal for both society and individuals.

The leader of Australia's Anglican community said the story of Christmas reminded people of God's hope and life.

"It is easy to lose heart when we look upon our world," Archbishop Aspinall said.

"It seems society has become habitually cynical and mistrustful, our public discourse thin and impoverished.

"We are thirsting for a new spirit - new ideas, new generosity and a new gratitude for all we have and are. Christmas is the time for new imagination."

Anglican Archbishop of Sydney Peter Jensen - in his last Christmas address before his retirement next year - said it was a time for reconciliation with God and each other.

"Reconciliation is a big theme for us Aussies," he said.

"Notably, we need to be reconciled with each other; not least, we more recent immigrant settlers with our indigenous First People.

"Reconciliation has to flow out of love."

Catholic Archbishop Denis Hart, the president of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, offered a prayer for the coming year while reflecting on Jesus's birth.

"My prayer is that 2013 will be characterised by peace in our society, tolerance and respect for young and old, and an ability to look beyond the immediate moment to the hope which God provides each of us by his coming," he said.

"Then we know that we are valued and we can make our city, our home, a better place.

"It is significant that God came to people in material poverty to show the great worth of each human person."

World Vision chief executive and Baptist reverend Tim Costello, said 2012 was a "grab bag of blessings and curses" for many Australians.

But Christmas was an opportunity to step away from the pressures and expectations of normal routines and find new possibilities.

" escaped the worst of the financial woes affecting other countries and our economy is still strong," Reverend Costello said.

"But on the other hand, many of us are struggling to keep up with our household expenses."

Churches of Christ federal coordinator Craig Brown made special mention of the young people abused by churches but said the institution may be able to partially restore lives.

Canberra Catholic Monsignor John Woods urged people to engage with the nativity scene of Christmas to get a perspective on the true significance of the period.

"Reclaim your lost innocence in the eyes of a baby, so powerless and yet so engaging," he said.

"This baby will confound, comfort and challenge and be rejected as too good to be true as he reconciles that which still divides us - life and death, light and dark, heaven and earth, victim and perpetrator, the refugee and the citizen, partisan politicians and the common good, the sick and the healthy, the rich and the unemployed, the loved and the lonely, all of us."




Aussies warned about Phuket scamsters

BANGKOK: -- Australian tourists in Phuket should be wary of extortion gangs, some of which are in cahoots with local police.

Australian Ambassador James Wise and his British counterpart, Mark Kent, have joined a Thai Ministry of Tourism campaign to tackle tourist scams on Phuket.

Up to 25,000 Australians visit Phuket each month, with Christmas and New Year the peak of the tourism season.

The main scams involve taxi and jet-ski operators in Phuket and the seaside resort town of Pattaya.

Mr Wise said travellers needed to be on their guard when they hired jet-skis or motorcycles.

"Consider the implications if it is stolen or damaged. Foreigners are commonly detained by police until compensation, often thousands of dollars, is negotiated between the parties."

Mr Kent said travellers should be cautious in "crowded markets, tourist sites, bus or train stations and festivals".

"It is best to avoid isolated neighbourhoods, shortcuts, narrow alleys and poorly lit streets, especially late at night," he said.

Larry Cunningham, Australia's honorary consul in Phuket, said scams and criminality had increased to such an extent that expatriates wanted to leave the island.

Mr Cunningham said young travellers were specially targeted by gangs and on occasion by local police.

In one incident, a young Australian man was involved in a minor traffic accident when riding a rental bike. He was told by police an injured man's condition was serious and was forced to pay thousands of dollars in compensation. [more...]

Full story: http://www.smh.com.a...1223-2btzi.html


-- The Sydney Morning Herald 2012-12-24

Stolid, Solid: Interviewing the Famous: Anthony Burgess

Picture courtesy Burning Man

He had a blinding hangover the morning he met Anthony Burgess.

He was yet to work out that only the lowest of the low in terms of the pecking order of journalists got slotted in at 9am, so the interview with Anthony Burgess was slotted in for that un-Godly hour.

And thus it was that the famous author, in the midst of blinding pain, appeared before him in the foyer of one of London's many upmarket hotels.

Before Dubai, the Arabs were already transformed London into one of the world's money centrals. In the spiraling eighties it was generally assumed that anybody who was anybody ended up spending time in London. New York, with all its crassness, might claim to be the centre of the world, but that historic city by the Thames had class, class, class.

Burgess had just penned his book Ninety-nine Novels: The Best in English since 1939; along with another in his Shakespearean series, the latest being Enderby's Dark Lady, or No End of Enderby.

Indeed, after he had waded through the Enderby series, there did indeed seem to be no end of Enderby.

At the time he shared the disdain towards Burgess held by some of the slower, less prolific writers in the English canon such as Al Alvarez, with whom he had taken to having long walks with on Hampstead Heath. He had gone out of his way to befriend the author of The Savage God, a contemplation on suicide and Sylvia Plath, ever since he had interviewed and got a very good run in the Australian Financial Review with Alvarez's 1983 book on the lure of gambling, The Biggest Game In Town.

It was just up "the Fin's" alley; and they ran it if memory served him correctly across a rare double page spread in their Friday review section.

The Savage God had been one of the bible's of his youth.

Back in the 1970s in the crowd with which he used to run, Sylvia Plath one of their genuine demi-gods.

Her early death at the hands of an oven simply made her all that more appealing.

We could quote lines from Plath's Daddy by wrote; and we weren't even at school:

You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time--
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal

And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.....

I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look

And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I'm finally through.
The black telephone's off at the root,
The voices just can't worm through.

If I've killed one man, I've killed two--
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.

There's a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.

"You do not do, you do not do, black shoe...you bastard I'm through" was some of our favourite lines.

"Slyvia Platitude" we had scrawled across the lounge room wall of that terrace in Sydney's inner-city suburb of Paddington which had seemed for a while to be the centre of everything.

Burgess's publication of Ninety-nine novels had predictably created a furore in literary circles, even promoting the publication of counter lists.


As quickly became evident when he asked Burgess about the sometimes excoriating commentary accompanying its publication, Burgess was hugely enjoying the controversy over which books should and shouldn't belong in a list of the 20th century's best fiction.

The criticism was water off a ducks back. He was already a multi-millionaire. Nothing could touch him but time itself. Critics were just mosquitoes as far as he was concerned; and he held what some would call a very healthy disdain for them.

Who would want to be a critic? he asked. Do these people sit in school and dream about their futures and think, yes, that's what I want to be, a critic. Is that all their dreams are made of?

As for the controversy, you have to start somewhere, Burgess shrugged. The book's promoted debate and that is what it was intended to do. And hopefully it's got people reading more books.

Although he hadn't enjoyed the Enderby books, wading through them dutifully in his preparation for the interview, he asked Burgess about hopefully what was to be the last of them, as No End of Enderby and the list were the two books then being promoted.

Burgess had already had breakfast in his room so unfortunately for him the famous author had no desire for any more repast.

While he could have done with a free coffee and some breakfast, the alcohol sweat making his clothes cling to his thin body even in the air conditioning of the hotel, the interview ended up being conducted on a couch in the foyer.

The PR bird sat perkily next to him throughout, occasionally trying to facilitate the conversation.

When the interview wound up after an hour which had seemed like an eternity he made his way across the football field of a foyer and out into the London streets.

He hadn't bothered to dress up for the interview, and didn't possess the clothes anyway, but the dank sweat coating him and his sick pallor from the city's nightclubs, made him look even worse than usual.

The sight of himself in the foyer's many mirrors did nothing to reassure him.

As he stepped down from the mezzanine level and headed towards the hotel's revolving doors, he saw Anthony Burgess and the public relations woman staring after him quizzically, and then burying their heads together.

Not that Burgess could talk. In the late 1950s he was dismissed from a position as a teacher in Brunei, and as an excuse claimed to have had a brain tumor; a tumor that was never found.

Burgess's story telling abilities were well known to extend to himself and as Wikipedia observers:

"Burgess' biographers attribute the incident to the author's notorious mythomania."

And as biographer Geoffrey Grigson wrote, Anthony Burgess was suffering from the effects of prolonged heavy drinking and associated poor nutrition...of overwork and professional disappointment.

There was no air of disappointment about Burgess at the time he met him.

Indeed, Burgess could hardly have appeared wealthier, more solid, more stolid, more assured of himself.

And as he entered the over white light of the street, he had a stab not just of disorienting pain, but of envy for the workers in the street, the shop keepers behind their counters, the bus driver passing by, the legal secretaries with bundles of documents rushing to their offices, for everyone else but himself. He envied their solidity, stolidity, normality singleness of purpose. For their certainty in who they were and why they were. While Burgess prepared for another interview before heading back home to Monaco, he headed back to his life in the London squats, with his increasingly frustrated lover, to another night of pointless carousing and implausible excuses.

Traces In The Past

Sketches Moving Men by Rosaka Chan

His friend was dying of AIDS.

That much was obvious.

He had run into Paul, who he hadn't seen for several years, at St Vincent's Hospital, which he was attending for another matter unrelated to AIDS.

But he was amazed at the number of people he encountered who he had known from the past, each attending their various treatments for the disease which had ravished so many of his contemporaries and brought them, diminished from their illnesses, to these broad steps and its large, muffled foyer.

Each of them was a long way from the individuals he had first met. Back then, in the 1980s, they had been full of life and flirtations, lovers and intrigue.

Now they were simply sick. Aging and dying in a way none of them had planned or wish; a feeble outcome from the dynamic people they once had been.

And thus it was he met Paul, again.

Paul had been an artist, back then, always sketching the people he knew, the young men who had frequented his various apartments, almost as if in secret. Whatever went on behind those doors was not for everyone to know.

All these years later, away from the intriguing paradises of inner Sydney, Paul was living with his long term lover in a Randwick apartment above a Thai restaurant, which he had helped set up his lover in.

Downstairs was all the bustle of a popular Thai restaurant, of which Sydney was increasingly full.

Customers sometimes queued out the door. It was always busy.

Following the instructions Paul had given him on the steps of the hospital, he had dropped by one day when he was driving past; having completed another mission from the Goddess.

It was night time and he was a little lost; wanting to ignite the flames of old. The warmth, the camaraderie, all the people they had known together.

Downstairs the boyfriend, now restaurant manager, pointed him to the stairs which led to the apartment upstairs; and then accompanied him to the door.

Paul was frail, and could not sustain the pressure of unwanted guests. Like so many, Paul had become increasingly isolated as his illness progressed. He didn't want people to see him the way he was now. He wanted people to remember him the way he used to be.

The boyfriend seemed relieved when Paul greeted him warmly and allowed him into the inner sanctum of his apartment, a humble place littered with memories, ghosts, suffering.

Paul was smoking a lot of marijuana to offset the nausea of the AIDS treatments that he was enduring; the prolonging of life for life's purpose, for a reason nobody quite new, perhaps in the forlorn hope that a cure was just around the corner.

For so many years nobody had known what the peculiar American illness now decimating the ranks of Sydney's gay population actually was.

The fear campaigns initially adopted by the Australian government, the grim reaper advertisements which while doing little to stop the spread of the disease had done much to instill fear of gay people in the general population, had now given way to more progressive and targeted campaigns.

But even so; AIDS held a stigma of the lost and the marginalised. It was the ultimate price to pay for once having been at the forefront of social change and sexual experimentation, for the wild parties, the Mardi Gras, the legal and political campaigns which had found sympathetic ears at the highest level of government.

And so they settled down to talk and reminisce, in that apartment above the bustle of the restaurant, the aura of long term love, the delicacy of discretion and illness, the concern of his healthy Thai boyfriend.

Paul told him all the stories about how he had spent years in India; as a gay man the object of great curiosity and attention from the local Indian men, who used to virtually queue at the door of his house, their own women, mistresses of their own domain, well under wraps.

And rolled joint after joint as the evenings settled into nights; and the throbbing tumult of the bars and clubs only a few suburbs away distant now in time and space; an unfocused longing from a different past.

A time they thought would never end.

Or at least end in a more glorious place than this.

Paul had destroyed almost all the paintings and drawings he had so painstakingly done all those years ago.

He couldn't understand why; and Paul tried to explain. He wanted to be rid of everything, all that had been, all that had made him sick, that had betrayed him so totally.

He showed him the fragments of sketches that he had kept; including pictures of himself and his then lover Martin, and he was particularly taken by the fine lines of Martin's then feline form.

And each drawing, or scrap of a drawing, spoke of the obsessions with men he had known and loved. There wasn't any laughter to be had in the rediscoveries.

He didn't hear of Paul's death immediately, the old social networks having been so thoroughly destroyed by the wasting disease, and therefore didn't attend the funeral.

He didn't try to talk to the restaurant manager boyfriend after he learnt of Paul's death.

He just continued to drive past the restaurant and think of him each time he passed.

He assumed the boyfriend would eventually sell up the restaurant at a considerable profit and return to his homeland.

And the memory of Paul continue to drift into nothingness, as he had wished. Just as he had destroyed his own sketches and paintings; in themselves a record of a bygone era. The suffering wiped clean. Only the memory of his laughing, devious, talented face and long intimate evenings lingering in the minds of some until they, too, were gone.

Hunting the Famous - Gore Vidal

Gore Vidal in 1948, two years after he published his first novel City and the Pillar at the age of 21.

Gore Vidal with one of his many literary enemies Norman Mailer during a speech in 1985 against the American political landscape of the day. Pictures courtesy of The UK Guardian.

By the time he got to Gore Vidal he was a little blase about interviewing famous people.

He had long ago worked out that offering interviews of the famous to Australian newspapers was a sure route to publication - and therefore money.

Would you like an interview with Joseph Heller, author of Catch 22, went down a treat with the now defunct then historic news magazine The Bulletin, which back in the early part of the 20th century had published famous Australian authors, including that most lyrical of poet-alcoholics, Henry Lawson.

Once they hit the stratosphere of multi-million dollar sales, world wide fame and armies of public relations hacks, living legends tend to become unavailable to all but the most prestigious newspapers and magazines.

Except when they're flogging product. 

Well we were crippled by the side of the mountain, away from the beach, as if we had been walking towards the desert but failed. For across the mountain lay another mountain, and no one from our village had ventured further. In stories, that was all, there were men on horseback and privileged fights, carousing in sophisticated taverns, away from the quiet, incestuous village life. We released the dog and gazed after it lovingly, our substitute child we had loved so much. Everything to us in the cold London winters. A long way from the outpost from whence we came. 

The speed they scored down Chelsea Road kept them all awake, the toxicity of their pleasures raising no doubts, for there was no tomorrow, only the dawn, the embrace, the inappropriate randiness, the knives drawn if you threatened to leave. It was so vivid and yet so shameful. So many had promised to cure him; and failed. He could see the whack whack whack of the crystal light in the turgid dark of the London suburbs; densely populated, aching with history. He was always the emissary, the one sent out to score. Out in the streets when no one else wanted to be out; haunting Vauxhall when the snow piled in the corners of the streets and the pubs, which they rarely had money to venture into, churned out a foreign world of which he would never be a part.

Richard was always there, at two am, when everybody else was asleep, downing shots of Drambuie or Tia Maria or some exotic cocktail he had lifted from his place of work, speeding of his head, always happy to see you, his old mate from Australia, his dark mentor, the one that had introduced him to William Burroughs and the merry dance; the plain sacrifice, the glass raised; his handsome face, his dark limpid eyes, always part of our fantasy and our lives. He was beautiful, simply beautiful, in his unadorned way, and we all adored him. He would embrace us, not knowing what he did to our hearts, and that would be the end of it, as they shuffled into the crippled dawn.

Richard is dead now because they're all dead now. If it wasn't AIDS it was overdoses, and in his fragmented self, in the shadows where he had once lived, that face resonated as the spirit of adventure, as a beloved man, as everything we held dear. Him and Stephen drinking in the bar at the London School of Economics, drinking the afternoon away and laughing in delight at their shared jokes. And he flitted past, even then not able to drink in the same quantity. They laughed and share their jokes, and greeted him as the writer, sure that one day he would write their story too, the silent observer, the court poet. 

They could see from the bar windows into their backyards, the Hollyhocks in astonishing bloom, here in the centre of London, ten minutes from Trafalgar Square. He was shadowed in his own guilt and felt as if he was being followed, always, about to be exposed for the criminal he was, a fraud more interested in being plastered than in producing the lines of lyricism they all expected. Every now and then something was published, as he interviewed famous author after famous author, lunching with Joseph Heller, wrinkling their foreheads at the antics of Norman Mailer, being welcomed into Gore Vidal's room at Claridges. Please don't be overwhelmed, he said in his sweeping way, welcoming them in.

And yet they sat on the balcony of that bar and pissed the afternoons away. And everything they thought they were going to achieve never happened. The book he had laboured so hard over fell flat on a spike of rejection slips. Stephen worked as a nurse and all his various enterprises, playing the harp, becoming an osteopath, creating a home for wealthy queens, none of them were happening yet; the days when he was to become a doctor far off. And as for Richard himself, the centre of our entrancement, he drank and he drank in those days when he could still be fabulous, in those days before the alcohol ate his body and the pills left him a mumbling wreck, and those affectionate embraces he reserved for his loyal circle of friends; they became the embraces of a dying man, a tragedy within themselves. He excused himself and wenwt back to the typewriter; something had to work sometime.



  He had interviewed Salman Rushdie in the room the same room where he had written Midnight's Children. It was before the Fatwah and his fame had spiralled out of all control. Serious breaches were breaking through the fabric of things. He had walked with Al Alvarez on Hampstead Heath, he had used his new found status as a freelance journalist to pursue all his literary idols, and had been successful to quite some degree. He met Anthony Burgess, Dirk Bogarde, Joseph Heller, all gone now, he interviewed Gore Vidal and hunted down Paul Bowles in Tangiers, he had dinner in Madrid with Ian Gibson, who had just written a biography of the Spanish poet Lorca, and he climbed and he twisted here about, the lonely voice from far off Australia.

The British, of course, treat Australians with something between amusement and contempt, or at least they did in those days, and it was relatively easy to inveigle his way into all sorts of situations. Salman was a special case. In those days, before time and age and numerous life pressures crowded out the days, he would always read the books before interviewing the author. He had particularly loved Midnight's Children, as had millions of other readers, and had read it in Bombay, or Mumbai as it is now known, even chasing down some of the locations in the book, the sprawling, chaotic, wealthy areas of Bombay with its fading glamour and crumbling old temples.

The book had resonated with the chaos of India, and with his friend Martin they had embraced these days of chaos and charm. The house where Rushdie lived at that time, in Kent Town he remembered, was a large hushed house which would have required substantial wealth to have bought, even back then. He was living in squats at the time, and the wealth struck him as much as anything. Rushdie had come from a well off merchant Indian family, and this surprising wealth, here in London, at the centre of things, was impressive to an antipodean. Oh how he had valued that walk with Al Alvarez on Hampstead Heath, as they talked of Sylvia Plath and The Savage God. Oh how it all seemed to point to a glorious literary career, if only he kept writing, if only he kept on moving.

The house was hushed. A maid had opened the door. It soon became apparent that all four floors of the house were the Rushdie family; an astonishing thing to him. A wife appeared briefly, very briefly, before disappearing into the bowels of the house. He was taken up to Rushdie's study. In those days, before his short hand and personal hieroglyphics were anything to write home about, he used a tape recorder, which he set up duly. His own life had been riddled with failure and dereliction, excessive drinking and bohemian friends, and he was quietly overawed, although he tried not to show it, at all that was being shown him, the windows that were opening up, this different world of wealth and influence and success.

Rushdie told him of his first science fiction novel - Grimus - which he utterly related to because his own first novels had been science fiction. And then Rushdie showed him a black and white photograph of the house that features in Midnight's Children, a big, rambling, Indian house where he had grown up. Outside, before he knocked on the door, he had frantically read the last pages of Shame, the book he was ostensibly interviewing him about, a sprawling, black work set in Pakistan, where few of the characters are admirable, the plot confusing and the politics dark. Rushdie seemed impressed that he had actually read the novel.

The interview went well. He spoke disarmingly of the fame that had been thrust upon him with the phenomenal success of Midnight's Children. He showed him the desk where he had written it; and asked, if you had written a book like that, just sitting here, not really talking to anybody, without any orthodox plot, with multiple voices inside it, the voices of India, sitting here, could you have possible imagined it would be a success? No, he answered, as if they were equals, as if he, too, would ultimately go on to have a famed career, for the beauty of the young is there is always hope, the disasters, the failures, the bites of reality, none of it has set in yet.

Afterwards, Rushdie had seen him graciously to the door, all the charm and magnificent courtesy of the wealthy Indian, all the vast diversity of their wealth and the complex, accepted wisdoms of their culture, and he walked back down the road into his own contrasting life in that overwhelming city. And he always followed, after that intimate hour with one of the world's greatest authors, his career with interest, the extravagances of Satanic Verses, the fatwah, the security, the changed wives, his increasing status into the literary stratosphere. While he went back to Australia and all his own books failed, and ultimately he became a journalist. The public relations person for Jonathan Cape told him Rushdie had told her it was the best interview he had ever done. That was a source of pride in a disintegrating life, as chaos after chaos proceeded to mount upon him.

Hunting The Famous - Joseph Heller

Joseph Heller. Picture courtesy St Catherine's College Oxford.

Living in London in the early 1980s, he quickly worked out that offering interviews of the famous to Australian newspapers and magazines was a sure route to publication - and therefore money.

Would you like an interview with Joseph Heller, author of Catch 22, went down a treat with the now defunct then historic news magazine The Bulletin, which back in the early part of the 20th century had published famous Australian authors, including that most lyrical of Australia's poet-alcoholics, Henry Lawson:

"For the Southern Land is the Poet’s Home, and over the world’s wide roam,
There was never till now a binjied bard that lived in a poet’s home, old man;
For the poet’s home was a hell on earth, and I want you to understand,
That it isn’t exactly a paradise down here in the Southern Land,
Old chap,
Down here in the Southern Land."

Once they hit the stratosphere of multi-million dollar sales, world-wide fame and flanks of public relations "experts" - otherwise known as hacks - most living legends become unavailable to all except the most prestigious newspapers and magazines.

Except when they're flogging product.

And they all passed through London to do just that.

Australia, like most countries, likes to think of itself as the centre of the earth, as a world leader - with the phrase "this is the best country on earth" often repeated.

In fact Australia is a vast and sparsely populated country on the edge of infinity, some of the harshest deserts on the planet for a centre and the threatening southern ocean spread out beneath.

The only time it ever feels like the centre of anything is at odd places in the ancient spiritual heart, where the rocks and the sand turn pastel and the sky becomes a swirling bowl above the yellow desert melons. And the landscape, millions of years old, is so powerful the Aboriginal stories of the Dreamtime become real.

For its peoples to become separated from this country, to be imprisoned within four walls, is a heart breaking loss. 

But for those with European ancestry, a sense of loneliness pervades the Australian consciousness.

And for very good reason.

An outcrop of western civilisation; Australia has no real neighbours.

And most of the world knows very little about it. Except for the fact that there are kangaroos there.

"Jin-Joey!" as the locals in Thailand, where he was presently living, would say, delighted that they could demonstrate their rarely extensive knowledge of his country of origin.

Back in the London of the 1980s, he soon worked out that plead as he might for an interview with one of his heroes, British author Doris Lessing, she wasn't going to make herself available just like that to some enterprising young journalist from a remote island on the other side of the world unless she had a book to sell. She was off writing a novel somewhere in the north, Scotland, if his memory served correctly, and always gracious, transmitted her good will without obliging. His preparedness to travel was dismissed.

Australians weren't great readers. The ability to act like a moron was keystone of survival in a country where chameleon like abilities were essential. Any sign of intellect was regarded with suspicion amongst much of the populace. Topping the class, as he had done consistently throughout his school years, was a death knell to popularity. As a consequence of this entrenched anti-intellectual climate, the Australian market for books was limited. But if you were selling a new book and were in interview mode, it was easy enough to slot in an aspirant from nowhere's ville.

As he was doing many of the interviews for the Friday review section of Australia's well regarded Financial Review, the best selling national finance paper in the country and known at the time for its rigorous style of journalism, he soon worked out the trick words to get the public relations person onside.

His standard line was: "It's for the Financial Review, the Australian equivalent of the Financial Times."

The Financial Times, then published distinctively on pale pink newsprint, was one of England's most prestigious newspapers and an organ any PR flack would like their subject to be showcased in. The readers were guaranteed to have enough money to buy a mere book.

He sometimes heard the almost invariably young women repeating his phraseology word for word as they explained to the bewildered author who had just conducted an interview with more familiar organs such as The London Times Review of Books or The Guardian exactly who he was.

Despite having crossed the first bridge and joined the queue of journalists lining up to interview whatever living legend was in town that week, there were other obstacles to overcome. 

He soon worked out why he was being slotted in at 9am to interview people like Anthony Burgess. 

He was low down the pecking order and in a busy day of scheduled interviews the morning spots were just about the least prestigious spot possible.

In those days, going through another phase of drinking and partying in the London clubs half the night, he wasn't always at his best at 9am. But then neither were the authors.

So when it came to Joseph Heller he reacted with mock horror when the public relations woman tried to slot him in at the allotted hour.

"Who wants to be interviewed at 9am in the morning?" he snapped back. "Not me. Don't be ridiculous."

"But he's got interviews slotted for every hour of the day," the PR woman protested. "There's nothing I can do."

He held his ground.

And thus it was that he came to have lunch with Joesph Heller, the author of Catch 22, one of the most famous novels of the twentieth century.

Joseph never repeated the success of the book whose title entered the English language as meaning a double trap.

In fact many of his books were rather long and rather dull.

But Heller in person was charm itself.

He arrived at the trendy little French restaurant near Covent Garden nominated by the public relations professional - it got their backs up if you called them girls - ahead of time and sat a little uncomfortably amongst the starched white linen tablecloths, the restaurant yet to fill with the lunchtime crowd.

Nothing to be frightened of.

Interviewing one of the 20th centuries most famous authors was just another strange event in an already crowded life.

Finally, a little later than the appointed hour, the PR woman with Joseph Heller in toe arrived, and he rose from the table to greet them.

They were full of the news that they had just passed an employment agency called Catch 22,

Which of course provoked the obvious question of what it was like to have written a novel whose title had literally entered the English language, the expression now being accepted into modern dictionaries.