Department of the Vanishing
This is another book I read because of Ian Mond. If you’re interested, here’s the publisher, Transit Lounge.
Poetry is very much not my vibe. I have always worried that I just don’t get it and so almost feel I shouldn’t be allowed to read it, and certainly not comment on it. Is this ridiculous? Of course it is. Well, mostly. Am I actually afraid of some beret-wearing, cigarillo-smoking, pretentious white man tut-tutting me?
Well. A little bit. Yes.
Anyway, I’m going to comment on this book despite my fears. And it is poetry – almost all of the text is set out as couplets, with almost no punctuation. Sometimes the story is hard to follow as a result, when it’s not clear how the clauses fit together. Which is, I presume, part of the point. A lot of the time, it’s completely clear, and a delight to read.
This is not, though, just a poetic novel. It’s also playing with the idea of found footage.
Almost every poetic page has a library stamp on it: RESTRICTED, or an accession stamp, or the link. In between poetry pages, there are collages of newspaper headlines; excerpts from the narrator’s police interviews; photographs and stills from video; pages where birds sounds are turned into text; transcriptions of the narrator’s mother’s maybe-dementia ramblings; and many lists.
Some of the found footage includes excerpts from other books, and friends, I dogeared a page because I didn’t have a bookmark handy when I got to the bit about Shifting Baseline Syndrome: “a gradual change in the accepted norms for the condition of the natural environment due to a lack of experience, memory, and/or knowledge of its past condition. (Soga & Gaston, 2018).
Ava lives in a too-near-future Australia, in 2029. She works for the Department of the Vanishing, archiving references to birds that are, or are nearly, extinct. (There’s a moment where she’s allocated the pelican: where to start? With Stormboy, of course – and my mid-40s-heart gave a great big heave.) She is also caring for her ailing mother, grieving her long-lost father, and seeking connection through a series of flings. Plus, of course, all the heartache that comes with her work.
It’s almost eye-rollingly trite to call this novel is a wake-up call, but of course that’s what it is. The idea that I would no longer hear kookaburras or magpies or the various teeny little tweety-birds I hear on the regular is horrifying. Is there something I can personally do? Probably not. Maybe I should send a copy of this book to some politicians.
It’s a splendid piece of art and I hope it gets more attention.
Kenny
Oh my.
I’ve only just seen this little Aussie battler – I was dubious when I first saw the trailers, then heard rave reviews from various people, but never got around to it.
It is brilliant.
I can’t begin to describe it properly. If you haven’t seen it, and you’re not embarrassed by poo-talk, you must see it. It captures Australia beautifully. The family relationships in particular are so true that they’re heartbreaking – and they actually are all family! That’s amazing – and that they didn’t kill each other in making it. Kenny himself… well. Quintessentially what we’d like to think Aussie working class blokes are like, but not so stereotyped as to be unbelievable. I think the sheer brilliance of this is that I know Kennys. Quirks, surprises, and sheer bull-headed determination and all.
His insights into Aussie culture – and seeing festivals and the like from behind, as it were – are pointed and exact, and at times quite disturbing because of their truth. Driving past the Calder Raceway every day as I do, the hoons shown there were a bit scary – again, because it’s just so true. And, reflecting the quote from the start, it really does show just how little attention is paid to people who are – for all we like to think we live in a glorious, flat, classless society – treated no better than servants ever were in the hey-day of rigid class division. Those were the bits that made me squirm; not the frank and easy talk of poo (“regular as clockwork, that’s me…”). But Kenny just goes on, and does his job, and enjoys his job, while the people who think they are his betters act like right knobs.
This is The Castle for the 00s. It had better go down as one of the more insightful looks at Aussie culture – as well as being very funny. And the cinematography too – it really does look like a doco; it’s magnificently done.
Randomly Yours, Alex 