Still digging

I kept digging. Apart from the photographs, tiny vases came up with the shovel, of all different colours. One had 'Portugal' painted on it, with flowers and squiggles. There was something that looked like a collection of four leaf clovers in a plastic wallet, and I stopped to remember how my father used to spend an hour every Sunday looking for those himself. Never did find any but had a good life anyway. I wonder if the person who belonged to these had been lucky? Ah, here's a bone, a grey yellow little thing, like out of a leg. Now that looks like a booklet coming up this time. What's it got on the cover ... Diary ... 1947 ...

Review of Melissa's Gift by Olin Dodson

Olin Dodson received a telephone call from a stranger in August, 1990, to tell him that a woman, Gloria Maria, with whom he had had a brief relationship in 1978 in Costa Rica, had a message for him. It turned out the message was that he had a twelve year old daughter and she wanted to meet him; she was the ‘Melissa’ of the title. This momentous news arrived at the same time he was thinking of relationships and yearning for a child of his own. The caller, Laura, who became a good friend, mentioned something about a pancreatic disorder; he learned it was cystic fibrosis, an incurable genetic disease that causes lung and digestive problems, in particular, and a truncated life expectancy.

 

Continued at The Compulsive Reader.

Review of Come the Revolution by Alex Mitchell

Alex Mitchell is a journalist with an extraordinary career investigating the political landscape, largely from a Trotskyist perspective. He begins his memoir with an ending: he and his partner Judith White leaving England and their many years of work for the Workers Revolutionary Party, he as reporter and editor of the party’s newspaper, and she as head of their book publishing program. It is July 1986 and they are going to Australia.

This is a big story, for Mitchell has led, so far, a big life. He was born in 1942 in Queensland to progressive-minded parents; his mother was a founding member of the One People of Australia League (OPAL), and encouraged activists like Roberta Sykes and Bonita and Eddie Mabo. His first job was as a cadet journalist on the Townsville Daily Bulletin in 1960:

 

My chief surprise was that at the end of each week I collected an envelope containing £6 (equivalent to about $120 today). They were actually giving me money for something I loved doing. I was still in disbelief when I gave up full-time reporting 47 years later. (13)

 

 

Continued at M/C Reviews: Culture and the Media. 

Review of A Field Guide for Immersion Writing by Robin Hemley

Robin Hemley has written an excellent book on immersion writing, which he defines as ‘any kind of memoir, travel narrative, or journalistic piece in which the narrative is as much forward-looking as backward, and in which the writer is a part of the story being told’ (8). He writes with humour and passion and injects himself into the prose, thus making for a great example of what he is describing.

Hemley is the director of the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa, as well as author of fiction, non-fiction, memoir, essays and books on writing. His previous, now updated, book on writing is Turning Life Into Fiction.

He loosely classifies each form of immersion writing according to the subcategories of quest, experiment, investigation, reenactment and infiltration. He stresses that these subcategories are not equally important for each form. In a fairly straightforward manner, Hemley addresses each form of immersion writing in the three chapters after the introduction, followed by a chapter on ethical and legal considerations, and one on preparing a proposal.


Continued at M/C Reviews: Culture and the Media.