Reflecting on 2023 - Books and Things

As I sit down to write this, I'm looking back on this blog and how long I've had it. Next year will be the 10th year of The Amber of the Moment but it really doesn't feel like it's been that long. When I started this blog I was continuing a neverending compulsion to write... I've been blogging online since 1999 with various different (now defunct) blogs, but this current blog is now the longest-running one I've ever had. Unbelievably, I've managed to keep it (mostly!) focused on just one or two things (predominantly, the teaching of English and History) with only a few digressions here and there.  

So here we are and 2023 is now coming to a close. I've just finished my first full year working as a Learning and Support Teacher, and it's honestly been one of my most rewarding years as an educator. I didn't get to read as much this year (just over 40 books I think) but I did watch a whole bunch of great films. I've kept my film list mostly to my Instagram and I might put together a top films list on here in a bit. Depends how much time I get over the Summer. 

Below are my 11 favourite books that I read this year, in no particular order. 

1. Cinema Speculation by Quentin Tarantino

With Tarantino's announcement that his next film will be his last, it's nice to know that he still plans to stay immersed in the world of the cinema, albeit as a critic. This collection of essays mixes memoir with recommendations of the director's favourite 1970s films. The combination of Tarantino's cinematic knowledge and his behind-the-scenes connections means that he can offer a unique perspective on film analysis that few can rival. Case in point, Tarantino writes about Steve McQueen (pictured on the cover) whilst offering up information about the screen legend gleaned from his personal conversations with those who knew him. Tarantino's direct access to actual film legends means that his expertise has that edge over many other film fans, making this a must-read for anyone who's a fan of cinema. It also introduced me to some films I'd never seen that I've since watched and loved.

2. The Promise by Damon Galgut

This sprawling epic of a post-Apartheid South Africa presents four decades in the life of an Afrikaner family. As members of the family navigate a shifting socio-political landscape from 1986 to 2018, they fail by varying degrees to make the moral leap into 21st century South Africa. Haunting and hypnotic, Galgut's prose hovers just above the characters' perspectives and effortlessly pulls the reader across a literary landscape both large and intimate. I found myself particularly fascinated by Anton, a truly memorable and oddly charismatic character who sits at the centre of the narrative like a repellent magnet. 

3. Sombrero Fallout by Richard Brautigan

I only discovered Brautigan about 3 years ago, and I'm grateful that this has happened later in my life as I'm almost finished reading all of Kurt Vonnegut's books and needed someone else hilarious and crazy to replace him. It's difficult to describe what makes Brautigan so brilliant, I think you really just have to experience his work firsthand. I read this one in a single walk - it presents two (very loosely) connected narratives; one about a writer who has just lost his girlfriend, the other about a sombrero that randomly falls out of the sky and causes a chain reaction of exponential chaos in a border town. A bizarre and one-of-a-kind book.

4. The Lost Man by Jane Harper

This is my fourth foray into Harper's crime fiction. I think The Lost Man rivals her popular debut The Dry in terms of being tightly constructed, surprising, and unputdownable. Harper is able to evoke the bone-dry hell of the remote outback whilst dipping in and out of several interconnected plotlines. The characters are finely-observed and ring true, and the thematic core of the book resonates beyond the trappings of the murder mystery genre.

5. Around the World in 80 Trees by Jonathan Drori

I picked this up after finishing the magnificent Pulitzer-prize winning tree-themed novel The Overstory. I simply hadn't had enough trees. I wanted more trees, and this delivered on that front. I don't know how you'd even classify this book - it's not quite scientific, though it is written by a scientist, and it's not quite mythology, though it is replete with fascinating sociological and folkloric miscellanea. I read this while walking underneath beautiful trees in the Blue Mountains, and I learned lots about amazing trees from around our planet. 

6. The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan

I'm hesitant to put this in my list because it left me feeling depressed and experiencing an existential crisis of sorts. I have included it on my list because the quote on the front, 'Devastatingly beautiful', is such an apt description for this powerful WWII novel. Dorrigo Evans, a womanising doctor from remote Tasmania, wrestles with the twin demons of a pre-war affair and his time as a POW on Japan's ill-fated Burma-Siam railway project. Flanagan's novel is kaleidoscopic and incisive, funny and tragic, and relentlessly brutal. It's a book that has sat heavy in my consciousness in the months since I finished it. 

7. Yellowface by R.F. Kuang

Kuang takes a hot topic - cultural appropriation - and skewers it in the biggest possible way with an outrageous racial satire for our times. I won't say too much about Yellowface as it would spoil its many twists and unexpected developments. I'll just say that I read this super quickly and was both highly amused and more than occasionally shocked. My only quibble is that I think the ending could have gone further!

8. Ocean Pools by Chris Chen

I saw this at the start of the year while in a Kiama bookstore, flicked through it, and then put it back down again. It's a coffee table book filled with magnificent photographs of ocean pools, and in the following weeks after I let it go I couldn't get the idea of it out of my head. It became a romantic dream that obsessed me, and I began checking bookstores everywhere back in Western Sydney. Eventually I found it in a Big W in Richmond and I took it home to digest slowly, staring at one or two pools a night. I'm not even that much of a swimmer, there's just something idyllic and old world about these semi-wild pools that sit on the edge of the continent, facing the elements and holding little fragments of history from their coastal communities. I found 'reading' this book to be weirdly therapeutic. 

9. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce

I read a non-fiction book called The Bookshop Book where its author visited amazing bookstores all over the world. In the course of her travels, various people recommend to her The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, a charming and arresting tale about a retiree who does exactly what the title says. The endorsements intrigued me so I sought the novel out. In it, hapless Harold goes to mail a letter to a long-lost friend and decides on a whim to hand-deliver it instead, walking over 600 miles from one end of England to the other. It's a journey that takes the reader along too, and its hard not to fall in love with poor Harold as he begins to transform and heal. 

10. Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

I can't quite put my finger on why I liked this. It's been a smash-hit all over the world and it's such a quirky, strange, disjointed novel. Imagine if you could visit a cafe that allowed you to time travel but, and this is a big 'but', there are several rules in place that heavily restrict the parameters of this travel. I won't tell you what these rules are as part of the joy of this book is the revelation of each of the ridiculous strictures and the ways in which they shape the individual stories of those who would time travel. As I said, it's all a bit strange. 

11. Acting Class by Nick Drnaso

Drnaso's highly-anticipated follow-up to the astonishing Booker Prize-nominated Sabrina is an equally mesmerising look at modern disaffection. Enigmatic and unsettling, Acting Class is Drnaso's most ambitious graphic novel yet, pulling together multiple characters as they're taken through a series of amateur acting lessons. The way this text builds tension through its exploration of the lost and the lonely leads to a burbling sense of terror that's both visceral and thought-provoking. Don't be fooled by Drnaso's deliberately bland drawing style - it fosters a sense of disorientation in the reader that's hard to shake and helps to create a strikingly memorable tone that feels like our feared tomorrows are already here.

Some Great Books

The last few years I resolved to read more. I used to watch a lot of film before this but I found my concentration span for cinema became absolutely shot to pieces when I first became a teacher. Reading became enforced quiet time or something I do while walking. It's a soothing balm on my brain. This year I've had less time to read than I did in years before but I still enjoy it so much.

Below are just five books I really like.

Sabrina: I love comics. Not the superhero kind, the other kind. No, not the Sunday funny strips, the other other kind... the self-contained graphic novels, Belgian and French adventure comics, independent comics; that sort of thing. When I found out that there was a graphic novel that got nominated for the Man Booker Prize, Sabrina by Nick Drnaso, I quickly made sure it got in front of me so I could experience it. It was really something else. In the age of fake news, internet trolls, and trial by social media, Drnaso has created an unsettling parable for the times - masterfully constructed and carefully controlled, and every bit as nuanced as any worthwhile literary novel.

Under Milk Wood: I read this three times in 2019 in order to prepare material for a textbook for Into English. I'd read it before, back in 2017, and I fell head over heels for Thomas's slippery, cheeky, self-engineering folklore. Listening to the 1950s BBC production, and reading it several times, allowed me to slowly immerse myself in the language and discover new things in every line. If you're unaware of Dylan Thomas's radio play then I would recommend reading up on it a bit to get an understanding of what it's 'about' before you read it - jumping into it cold turkey can be a disconcerting experience from a contemporary standpoint (I tried once 20 years ago and gave up before coming back to it in 2017). It's a rewarding text, extremely funny in parts, but it's also very unusual - essentially a day in the life of a town with over 60 characters and no real plot. If you can accept that you're not going to get a storyline or remember all the characters, then you'll be fine.

As I Lay Dying: Faulkner is such a dude. I'd never read his work before this and it was such a rich, textured vision of southern misery that I instantly started seeking out more of his stuff. Each of the characters present their own distinct stream-of-consciousness viewpoint, shedding shifting light on dark subject material. I kept thinking I could see where the narrative was going but Faulkner is playing his own game, and the rules to that game aren't easy to gauge through the various shades of narration, much of which is best judged as potentially unreliable. This easily deserves its status as a modern classic of the American Depression. 

The Pueblo Revolt: I did a lot of reading on the contact and colonisation endured by the Pubeloan peoples in America's southwest during the 16th and 17th centuries. In the course of my research I zeroed in on this book by David Roberts as being the best... aside from being well-researched in its depiction of the clash between the Puebloans and their Spanish conquerors, it also happens to be an engaging narrative that conveys the work of a historian travelling across a landscape in search of leads and new primary sources. A great book for anyone who's interested in the way in which history is written, and also a uniquely detailed representation of a fascinating and largely unknown piece of frontier history.

Freddy Lombard: I'm a big fan of the ligne claire comic genre (think Tintin) and this tragically short series expands, subverts, and pays homage to all the things that are great about it. My only criticism is that there will never be any more adventures for Freddy Lombard and his pals due to the untimely death of author Yves Chaland in 1990. I've written more extensively about this gem here.

Top Reads for 2021

This year, in total, I read just over 100 books - a mixture of fiction, non-fiction, graphic novels, audiobooks, and picture books. You may note that this blog has not had as many updates lately... suffice to say, I found 2021 to be immensely challenging for a range of reasons. So it was nice, no matter what was happening, to always have some reading on the go. Often I find reading to be an anchor of sorts. 

I got my list down from 111 to my favourite 17.

The Dry by Jane Harper: I was riveted from start to finish and could not stop reading it because I really had to know what happened. This is great Australian crime fiction, and the isolated location gave me strong Peter Temple's Broken Shore vibes. I ordered and read Harper's second book almost immediately after finishing The Dry. 

The Museum of Whales You Will Never See by A. Kendra Greene: A wonderful series of discursive essays that take the reader along on the author's adventures through Iceland's esoteric museums. Wistful, fascinating, and full of wanderlust. Museum.. is the best kind of travel writing and easily my most favourite piece of non-fiction that I read this year.

Milkman by Anna Burns: What an incredible tour-de-force exploration of Northern Ireland's 'Troubles' period. Expertly constructed with an authentic and razor-sharp voice... a devastating examination of the corrosive power of conformity. This easily deserved its Booker Prize.

The Boy From the Mish by Gary Lonesborough: A beautiful, funny, heartfelt, authentic coming-of-age YA story from a gay Aboriginal perspective. My only gripe is that it's a bit sexually explicit in parts, which means I'd be hesitant to tackle it in a classroom. Lonesborough's future books will be ones to watch!

Nothing Much Happens by Kathryn Nicolai: A different sort of book to the other ones on this list. This is a book version of a popular podcast; I bought it on a whim as something to read to my wife each night to help her sleep. It worked a treat - easy rhythmic episodes designed to relax and lull. A nice concept, and it earns its place on this list because it had a positive real world impact on my life.

Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan: I've never read anything like this before and I loved it so much. It's a hard novel to describe but it's short and it's perfectly written and hilarious and poignant. Brautigan has become my new favourite author. 

The Iliad by Homer (Translated by Stephen Mitchell): Why did I wait so long to read this? I was swept up by the chance to experience the iconography and elegiac descriptions of the horrors and glories of a war culture, as written from within. Interwoven with myth and history... not at all as I expected (no Trojan horse, no Achilles heel!). I listened to this one, and Alfred Molina was a great narrator.

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas: I don't read a lot of YA Lit but I had to check this out due to the hype. It did not disappoint. Very much a vivid and electric book for our times. The Hate U Give is a frequently contested titles in schools due to the way it links into the BlackLivesMatter movement, but it's hard to imagine a legitimate reason for anyone wanting to stop other people from reading it. 

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead: Historical literature with a dash of magic realism. Whitehead employs crisp imagery, riveting characterisation, and a memorable examination of 19th century slavery in order to construct a 21st century literary classic on par with To Kill a Mockingbird. Loved it. 

Stuck Rubber Baby by Howard Cruse: I came across this while working my way through the graphic novel canon and was taken by its careful reconstruction of a time period via the lens of memoir. Stuck Rubber Baby is a roman-a-clef that offers a rich representation of the civil rights movement from a gay perspective. Amazingly detailed artwork and brilliant storytelling.

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel: I thought I'd be over hearing about Henry and Anne Boleyn after bingeing on The Tudors a few years back but Mantel offers a narrative that effortlessly recreates historical detail while retaining an identifiable human element. Mantel's Cromwell is a masterful characterisation. A truly absorbing novel. 

The Story of China by Michael Wood: I've looked at Wood's stuff before and, whilst he is very much a historian in the TV Presenter mood, I found a lot to be impressed with in this one-volume take on the Middle Kingdom. This ambitious, overarching history of China does a brilliant job at presenting the big events alongside smaller and more under-represented stories. 

Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart: A compelling and authentic piece of literary art. Shuggie Bain offers a heartbreaking perspective on the cycle of poverty, addiction, and dysfunction. Agnes Bain will go down as one of the great characters of 21st century literature. Another well-deserved Booker Prize win.

Under-Earth by Chris Gooch: A perfectly constructed and artful depiction of a brutal Australian dystopia. Modern day convicts are thrown into a garbage underworld without hope or independence. One of the best new dystopias I've read in a while.

Civilisations by Laurent Binet: This unique chronicle of counter-factual history imagines a sequence of events that leads to an Inca conquest of Europe in the early 16th century. It sounds like such an unlikely concept but Binet absolutely nails it through his fine observation of history and the forces that make it tick. Fascinating, incisively satirical, lively, and devastating in its dissection of European ideologies.  

Mirror Sydney by Vanessa Berry: A wonderful book of essays about Sydney's hidden histories and the layers of urban esoterica that evoke our memory. Berry has a knack for exploring nostalgia and loss, and attaching value to the devalued. This one really resonated with me because of how familiar I found the geography and history.

Follow Me In by Katriona Chapman: Another personal one. I picked this memoir travel-lit up because it features a lot of places in Mexico that I'd visited. Chapman's memoir is heartfelt and bittersweet and features some of the most beautiful and accomplished artwork I've ever seen in comic form. It took me back to Mexico and I felt like I'd walked it all over again. 

Top Reads for 2020!

I had a lot of time to read this year. It was the thing I filled the 'gaps' with, and something that kept me motivated. I can safely say that I read more in 2020 then I have in any other year. Of the 127 books and graphic novels that I read, the following 12 are my favourites; the ones that stood out most...

The Shipping News by Annie Proulx: One of my favourite reads of the last 5 years - such a great novel, funny and richly quirky and tragic and just beautifully constructed and written. I read it back in Autumn while walking by the sea, with the cold wind whipping up around me, and the weather felt perfectly attuned to the content of the novel. More than six months later I'm still thinking back on it and hoping to read something else like it. 

My Friend Dahmer by Derf Backderf: A perfect intersection of meticulous, exhaustive research and one person's unique insight into the formative years of one of America's most notorious serial killers. Derf Backderf deals with the material with sensitivity and integrity, and works incredibly hard to avoid veering into speculation. Intensely magnetic.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel: A wonderful, scary, hopeful, metatextual English teacher's dream of a post-apocalyptic novel. The author imagines a world struck down by a devastating pandemic (fancy that!) and adds layers of interlinked characters, multiple narratives that span decades, King Lear, and a fictional graphic novel-within-a-novel. Station Eleven took me four walks to read, and I would gladly read it again.

Lost Transmissions by Desirina Boskovich: This is a brilliant piece of counter-'canon' work that shines a light on an influential secret history of speculative fiction - the forgotten voices, the unsung artistic legends, the might-have-beens. Boskovich investigates the influence of science fiction on every aspect of pop culture - books, film, art, architecture, music, fashion - and presents the texts that slipped through the gaps or deserved more attention. It prompted me to seek out a bunch of new texts.

Safe Area Gorazde by Joe Sacco: I was a teen when the Yugoslav Wars tore the Balkans apart. It was confusing, partly because '90s Australian media didn't know what to make of a war where Muslims were very clearly the victims. This non-fiction graphic novel makes an incredibly challenging and complex piece of recent history quite terrifyingly clear. 

The Voyage of QV66 by Penelope Lively: You may have noticed a few post-apocalyptic titles in this list. I read 15 such novels this year, and the ones that made it onto this list are the true stand-outs. The Voyage of QV66 takes a different angle in that it presents a post-apocalyptic vision of Britain where the animals have inherited a world mysteriously void of humans. It's a fascinating parable that also happens to be very entertaining, and is suitable for adults and children alike. 

The Transmigration of Bodies by Yuri Herrera: A hardboiled, neo-noir, dirty-as-malaria, Mexican crime novella with shades of intense social decay. Imagine Romeo & Juliet mixed with Dashiell Hammett in a favela. It's a really quick, gripping read too, and I ordered Herrera's previous novel straightaway after reading. 

Blacksad by Juan Diaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido: If you love detective fiction, film noir, intelligently-captured caricatures of incisive crime genre archetypes, or evocative artwork that conveys so much so perfectly, then you must read the graphic novel Blacksad. A great find for me this year :)

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin: I loved this. Ursula Le Guin demonstrates in this novel why she is widely considered one of the greatest sci-fi authors of all time. This carefully-written narrative offers an insightful, compelling, feminist vision of an androgynous society. Paradoxically of its time (the late '60s) and way ahead of its time. A+ effort.

Boy Swallows Universe by Trent Dalton: I got completely hooked once I got past the disorientating opening and adjusted to the rhythm of the writing. Dalton knocks it completely out of the park with this epic and finely-observed Aussie bildungsroman. Great characters and writing - lives up to the hype!

H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald: An astoundingly heartfelt interweaving of falconry, personal grief, and an investigation of the pained, repressed life of the great English author T. H. White. Helen McDonald's prose is as sharp as the hawk's beak. This is great memoir writing.

In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan: An eerie, strange, beautiful, enigmatic, post-apocalyptic classic of the 1960s. Possibly the best book I've read this year and one of the most unexpected. I was so inspired I created the artwork below, and I'm about to read it again!

And that's it!

Here are some other honourable mentions that would round out a 'Top 25' from 2020:

The 1950s counter-culture graphic novel memoir Cruisin' with the Hound by Spain Rodriguez, influential island-set graphic novel Streak of Chalk by Miguelanxo Prado, Kurt Vonnegut's political satire Mother Night, Afro-futurist Romeo & Juliet remake Prince of Cats by Ronald Wimberly, American gothic classic The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers, Korean memoir Banned Book Club, Jules Verne's 20 000 Leagues Under the Sea, Italo Calvino's On a Winter's Night a Traveler..., Steinbeckesque graphic novel Kings in Disguise by Jim Vance and Dan Burr, the haunting Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham, Flea's memoir Acid for the Children, the challenging epic A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James, and Waubgeshig Rice's First Nations-perspective on the end of the world, Moon of the Crusted Snow.

Book Journeys: Freddy Lombard

For as long as I can remember I have the loved the ligne claire comic genre or, at least, certainly loved it a lot longer than I have known the term 'ligne claire'. Like a lot of other youngsters in the 20th century my love was primarily fixated on Herge's immortal Tintin comics. The term 'ligne claire' translates to 'clear line' and refers to the un-shaded style of illustrating comics that was invented by Herge. As such, it's a genre defined by look more than anything else, though the popularity of the Tintin comics has infused the genre with other conventions related to storytelling, characterisation, setting, common motifs, etc.  

As I've grown older (and matured like the dried-out husk of a cactus that refuses to die) I've sought out other comics in this style - Yoko Tsuno, Julian Chancer, Blake and Mortimer. Each of these have their own charms but, truth be told, none holds a candle to Herge's ageless and intrepid reporter. There is, however, a series called Freddy Lombard that has accolades of its own. I'd always seen the cover of the single-volume Freddy Lombard collection and been put off by the protagonist's Tintin-esque look. I mean, he just looks like a shameless imitation. Eventually though, propelled by the many favourable reviews this series attracts, I caved and checked it out.

Freddy Lombard is perhaps the closest thing to Tintin's equal within the ligne claire genre. Although, in saying that, I do both texts a disservice as their similarities are purely superficial.
 
There are five volumes of adventures for Freddy Lombard and his friends Dina and Sweep and the tragedy is that there will never be any more, owing to the untimely death of author/illustrator Yves Chaland in a car accident at the age of 33. Written in the 1980s, the Freddy Lombard series starts in goof-ish, good-natured fashion before maturing exponentially with each subsequent volume. The content of the later volumes decidedly break from the child-friendly realm of Tintin with content increasingly adult in nature; sophisticated storytelling that hinges on the psychological, the political, and even the disturbing.

There's something cinematic about the way Chaland stages the elements within each frame. The top extreme wide shot displays a character on the far right in miniscule (denoting his vulnerability to the open sky outside) as a sliver of light cracks across the cargo hold of the plane, then - frame by frame - the light washes over him and he moves up into the centre of the frame to meet it, conveying the moment that his mind seems to snap in the face of danger.

A quick overview of the stories within the collection:

The Will of Godfrey of Bouillon (First published in 1981, when Chaland was 24)

The most 'throwaway' of Freddy Lombard's adventures and not the best introduction to the series. Freddy and his friends, seemingly a trio of travelling hobos, assist a rich alcoholic in trying to locate a treasure in a medieval castle. The treasure-search is actually a framing device and most of this comic focuses on a comedic dream sequence where Freddy imagines himself back in the middle ages. 

An African Adventure (Released in 1984, when Chaland was 27)

The gang travel to Africa to hunt for a unique photographic plate on behalf of a collector. Chaland, whilst unfortunately leaning on visual stereotypes for the African characters, explores and deconstructs certain themes tied to colonialism. In this tale the reader is shown where Freddy and his friends live, a run-down building in 1930s Paris where they must huddle-together against the elements and are constantly on the lookout for either food or money. 

The Elephant's Graveyard (Released alongside 'An African Adventure' in the same volume in 1984)

Another African-themed adventure that explores the ramifications of colonialism for the coloniser and, despite taking a humourous approach to a murder mystery, finishes with a surprisingly poignant and affecting resolution. 

The Comet of Carthage (Published in 1986, when Chaland was 29)

This marks the point where the series takes on a more mature tone, with Freddy and his peers moonlighting by the Mediterranean where Freddy has become obsessed with saving a beautiful Tunisian muse from the artist who paints her. A more meditative and 'adult' piece, calling to mind the sort of European sensibility more often found in Italian New Wave cinema.

Holiday in Budapest (Published in 1988, when Chaland was 31)

Set in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, Freddy and his chums find themselves dramatically caught up in events as the country rapidly descends into destruction and potential collapse. Chaland does something quite deft in plotting a character-based quest within such a turbulent historical event, managing to convey a sense of apocalyptic doom, national hope, the Soviet mindset, and outright chaos.

F.52 (Published in 1990, when Chaland was 33)

The crowning glory and true gem of the collection, F.52 sees Freddy, Dina and Sweep working as cabin crew on the first atomic-powered flight from Paris to Melbourne. Claustrophobic and meticulously-plotted, F.52 presents a Hitchcock-esque web of increasingly tangled subplots and builds to a tense denouement that borders on the surreal. 

And then that's it, there's no more. Once I got to the end of this collection I felt a profound sense of sadness for the tragedy of Chaland's early death and the Freddy Lombard stories that were never written. I know I will be revisiting these stories from time to time; they're that special. I guess the bittersweet silver-lining here is that Chaland's genius lives on in this handful of adventures that he left behind.

Ergodic Literature

As Term 4 approaches I'm about shoulder-deep in preparing resources for HSC Extension English 1 and enjoying the opportunities afforded by the new syllabus. It's one of those things where the more you look, the more you find, and part of the challenge is in parsing the seemingly infinite bounty of literature that's on offer and figuring out what will work with my particular class when exploring the mandatory Literary Worlds module. There has been some excellent Professional Learning courtesy of the English Teachers Association that I found very helpful, and the networks of hardworking Extension teachers sharing resources on Facebook has been quite a boon as well, but, as with all things, I just can't get my head completely around something until I start trying to do it myself. 

One of the joys of Extension English 1 is that the course is broad enough to allow for a multitude of cautious creepings down various literary back-alleys. One such alleyway that stood out to my sensibilities as a 'must' was ergodic literature. In exploring what a writer does, and how literature is read, the most extreme avenue to travel down must surely be those narratives that require the most effort to read.

What Is It?

The most common definition (and like its grandfather, postmodernism, its a definition that's a little tricky to pin down) is that ergodic literature is any text that requires 'nontrivial effort' to read it. That is to say, beyond reading the words and turning the page, the text will require something extra from the reader if they are to grasp the beginnings of meaning intended by the author (and that intention may even be that meaning is created almost solely by the reader). 

Here is a PPT that contains a more in-depth explanation.

And here are some examples from ergodic texts that students can look at. 

Engaging Students

Okay, so my main reason for doing this with my class is that it'll let me share two of my all-time favourite texts: Building Stories and Riddley Walker. 

Building Stories - the box

Building Stories by Chris Ware is a unique graphic novel that comes in an A3-sized box. Within this box are 14 different texts in a range of mediums - newspaper, comics, pamphlet, cloth book, flip book - with no specified order for them to be read in. Most intriguingly, there is a map of a house that seems to indicate where each of the texts should or can be read. For example, one comic is to be read in the kitchen, so I read that one while having breakfast. Another text is linked to the bedroom, one to an armchair, etc, etc.

Note the schematic - this seems to indicate which part of a house links to each of the specific texts within the box

All 14 texts - I had to step back a fair way to fit them all in one photo!

Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker appears to be more like a regular novel on the surface. It's a comparatively slim post-apocalyptic text set out in the traditional fashion, however, where the reader has to do some work is in translating the first person narrative's invented dialect into something more identifiable. In setting his story set far into a post-nuclear future devoid of technology, Hoban has constructed a version of the English language that has distorted and disintegrated over time. Some words remain the same, some words are recognisable with a little work from the reader, and some words are maddeningly obscure and enigmatic in meaning. What's great about Riddley Walker is that the more you read of it the more meaning you begin to glean from the text - essentially because the reader, with concentration, becomes increasingly fluent in this new dialect.

After introducing these two texts to the class the next step is to let the students engage with them. I've selected two relatively-easy extracts from Riddley Walker, the opening page and a section in which the oft-mentioned mythical figure 'Eusa' seems to join the text as a speaking character, with the intention for students to read and then discuss what some of the words might mean.

Extracts here.

Independent Response
After students have been taken on this little tour of the ergodic genre the next step is to consolidate their thinking. Coming about six lessons or so into a look at the Literary Worlds module, the intention is that students should be familiar with a few different literary theories about reading by this point. I'll blog more about this at a later point, but the key ideas I want them to think about are:

• The text is the message (this is the traditional, formalist approach to reading).
• The reader creates the message in conversation with the author.
• The author's intentions are irrelevant as they cannot control what or how the reader reads.
• There is no single message in a text - the shifting nature of context changes what is read.
• Reading is a 'community' act - our literary competence comes with our experience of how literature is interpreted by others. 

So, with all this in mind, students should have a bit of time discussing and reflecting on ergodic texts before responding to the following question with a paragraph-length response:

Why would an author choose to write ergodic literature?

Which should give scope for a range of responses and, at the very least, let students start to iterate what they're thinking.