Book Fair Day Two

I forgot that the book fair elves keep filling the gaps with new books, so my second visit proved more fruitful. Here's what I bagged today, for the princely sum of $15:

The Waves, by Virginia Woolf
Cold Comfort Farm, by Stella Gibbons (I used to have this but it's disappeared - did I lend it to anybody?)
A Question of Upbringing and A Buyer's Market, books 1 & 2 in Anthony Powell's series A Dance to the Music of Time
The New Poetry, a little Penguin anthology of moderns which I bought largely because of Sylvia Plath and RS Thomas
The Fly in the Ointment, by Alice Thomas Ellis
Blessed City, Gwen Harwood's letters to Thomas Riddell in 1943.

Not a bad lot of loot methought.

In the relic darkness of sleep and love

Here's one of my favourite Australian poets, Gwen Harwood, with a poem called “Triste, Triste,” which I think roughly translated means something like “sad, sad.” This one has a paschal flavour, because I forgot to post any one of the great number of good Easter poems last Friday. 

In the space between love and sleep
when heart mourns in its prison
eyes against shoulder keep
their blood-black curtains tight.
Body rolls back like a stone, and risen
spirit walks to Easter light;

away from its tomb of bone,
away from the guardian tents
of eyesight, walking alone
to unbearable light with angelic
gestures. The fallen instruments
of its passion lie in the relic

darkness of sleep and love.
And heart from its prison cries
to the spirit walking above
'I was with you in agony.
Remember your promise of paradise,'
and hammers and hammers, 'Remember me.'

So the loved other is held
for mortal comfort, and taken,
And the spirit's light dispelled
as it falls from its dream to the deep
to harrow heart's prison so heart may waken
to peace in the paradise of sleep.

Lifeline Book Fair

Hard on the heels of my pilgrimage along the booktrail comes the Lifeline Book Fair - a massive event for Canberra, which is largely populated by nerds.  The approach to these magical bazaars always reminds me of the opening of Harry Potter: people with empty bags, baskets and carts (in lieu of capes)  scurrying across roads and huddled in gaggles of barely suppressed glee. On my way in I always look askance at people leaving with bulging bags, wondering if they're making off with the ones I wanted. Indeed the very abundance of books engenders just as much excitement about what you might find as fear of what you might miss.

Canberra's was slightly different from the Brisbane iteration so took some getting used to. There was no unpriced section which meant we were paying around $3 for most paperbacks (instead of Brisbane's fill-a-bag-for-$10). The classics section was pitifully small, but there was a very strong Australian collection. The general fiction section was much smaller, but also less crummy. It was fairly poorly signed (at one point I found myself asking a volunteer “Excuse me, I'm looking for religion”), but I suppose part of the fun of these things is the chaotic and serendipitous journey through the labyrinth.

In case you're interested, here's what I bought for a total of $12.50:

The Flight of the Falcon, by Daphne du Maurier
Tirra Lirra by the River, by Jessica Anderson
Where Angels fear to Tread, by EM Forster
An Imaginary Life, by David Malouf
Mark Twain in Australia and New Zealand, by Mark Twain

And here's what was on my list. If they were there, I missed them...

Anything by Anthony Powell, Eleanor Dark, Edith Wharton
The Practice of the Presence of God, by Brother Lawrence
The Catcher in the Rye, by JD Salinger
Calvin and Hobbes, by Bill Watterson

Book Country

This is where I spent yesterday - the southern highlands of NSW.  I started in Bowral, meandered through Moss Vale and Sutton Forrest, thence to Berrima, and wound up at Berkelouw's Book Barn, 3ks down the road - and only about 10 ks from the Hume Highway if you happen to be shuffling from Sydney to Canberra or vice versa.  The region is home to the NSW Book Trail, and is thickly populated with second-hand book stores. I didn't buy much (just Edith Wharton's The Buccaneers at the improbably named Bong Bong Books, and a Georgette Heyer at Sophie's Books - both in Bowral). Berkelouw's, though, is well worth a visit.  I remember vividly my first visit to Berkelouw's in Newtown, hidden away in an alley off King Street, a store of untold wonders.  This one, if possible, is even better. Tucked down a tree-lined lane in the middle of farm country, it's a vast, beamy, lofted structure, its stone flagged ground floor and woody attic both stuffed with books ranging from the rare and costly to the cheap as chips. They also do pretty tolerable coffee in an adjoining saloon.  I drove home to Canberra at dusk  in something of a happy dream. Nothing like books and God's green earth to remind one how good it is to be alive.

The End of The Road

I finally finished The Road over the Easter weekend. It was hard going; a thankless treck across the bleakest territory imaginable. The writing is beautiful, lyrical in places, but the story is utterly and deliberately unrewarding. Some have described it as redemptive, but only in the sense that these survivors - who envy the dead - survive once more. Survival itself is both a compulsion and a curse in this ashen world where nothing grows and you can't see the sun. There is no hope except the next meal and the next evasion of violent death. Though they follow their road through vast tracts of post-apocalyptic America, their lives are as cramped and circumscribed as those of prisoners. They “carry the fire” but they don't know where nor for how long nor who else might be warmed by it. Their journey, like the road, and like the book itself, has no beginning and no end. No meaning except that given by the rare moments of pathos or ease in an otherwise unrelieved struggle. In this sense the book is an allegory of human life. 

Given to survival, whence and why we know not, ultimately unredeemed. A strange book to read at Easter.