Grimmish

 

A self-published novel making the Miles Franklin Award shortlist was a first, and a wonderful story. Author Michael Winkler and his agent had tried it everywhere, and no one was interested, so Winkler made the painful decision to print his own copies. I am not sure if it was gumption or a smart agent, but the book ended up being read by some of Australia’s best novelists (J.M. Coetzee and Helen Garner) and things took off from there. The shortlisting means that Grimmish is now published by Puncher & Wattmann, and in the UK by Peninsula Press. The man must be kicking himself.

What to make of the novel? The story, as such, is a retelling of Joe Grimm’s 1908-09 tour of Australia, where he seems to have continued his form of being a boxer famous for being able to absorb punishment without the ability to land the killer blow himself. Winkler has done a lot of research, and much of this appears in footnotes written in a playful, academic tone. Some notes explain allusions to other texts, or thoughts of the narrator (for example, a quotation from Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit [p.19]). Speaking as someone who has been through the time-consuming process of contacting publishers for permission to quote from a only a handful works, I am confused about how Winkler managed do this so liberally – but who knows.

There are many aspects of the novel I enjoyed a great deal, and I would summarise these as relating to a) playful language of narrator/author, b) wildly inventive ways of reframing the narrative, c) metafictional elements [in truth, all three are related]. To take a page with its corner folded,

I was talking with my wife and my son, I said to my uncle, and my wife said what are you working on, but you know it’s okay if you are not telling me. We have been together a lot of years and she knows that I am cactus prickly about discussing what I’m writing until it’s written. And my son said it’s the exploded non-fiction novel with Grim and the goat, and my wife said I’m not sure if that is a real answer or you’re just joking (p.116).

As a piece of narration, this opening to a chapter sounds like an author talking to the reader about the trials and tribulations of being a writer (a form of self-punishment, really – and you may as well be speaking to a goat).

Another example of a folded page. (What better way to get into something I liked?).

I notice, I said to my uncle, that you are rampaging about in rural and remote Australia without ever encountering a First Nations person. I’m a little surprised.

I’m surprised that you’re surprised, he said … My mob, non-Indigenous Australians, are almost crazed with desire for their art, their blessing, their music, their knowledge, access for the rapacious academic researchers who descend from every corner to probe and prod and provoke and proclaim to questionable effect … (p.123).

Here we have the writer questioning the storyteller (uncle) and the uncle firing back in plain terms his feelings about the ethical quandary of the non-Indigenous writer representing a culture that isn’t his own (and the questionable motives of doing so). On another level, just look at the lovely alliteration of ‘probe and prod’ and ‘provoke and proclaim’. In this example we have playful language, and metafictional elements that extend beyond the section quoted (‘And you fix that by writing a book without Aboriginal characters?’ [p. 135]).

I’ll leave it to others to make sense of the talking goat (as reported by the uncle to his nephew, the storyteller to the writer-figure) and conclude with a passage that every writer must ponder when writing a manuscript, he (in his heart) isn’t sure is publishable.

I’ve got bored, he said. Bored of words. Look at this place! Sitting here in the valley of the mountain of words, which is all I’ve accumulated in a lifetime, that and a few suspect memories … I should have been painting watercolours of quetzals and cassowaries, should have taught children how to repair bicycle, should have made love to at least one person from every country in the world, should have started a laughter farm … But no, I chose words. Goddamn words. I wish there was any other way to get to the end of this too-long Grim tale. Bored, bored, bored! But you’ve come this far. I’ll push on (p. 166).

I’m glad that the uncle continued his ‘bibliotherapy’ (p. 167) and the writer Winkler kept going with words instead of watercolours, however purposeless that must have felt at times. It may be unfair to take a passage like the above on so literally, but this is a non-fiction novel, and the frustration and self-doubt rings true. The last lines of the novel directly connect the writer and boxer, as in the phrase ‘We’ve settled on twenty stanzas. It’s an appropriately exhausting experience … Meanwhile I treasure each and every round’ (p. 251).