[lit-ideas] Verandah People
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 14 Aug 2004 11:47:43 EDT
Excerpt from "Verandah People" -- by Jonathan Bennett -- A review by
Georgie Lewis, below. Cheers,
JL
From "About Walking":
His verandah -- the overhang with its leaf-clogged
gutter, the weary floorboards, the Australian wilderness
picture-framed by vertical posts -- is among the last
licks of this part of Sydney's sprawl. After it, there
is nothing but blue haze, eucalypts, and heat waves
for weeks. As he walks, around him is sudden noise.
Bird calls. Then, just as suddenly, their lull, sonic
endlessness. This is a country of edges and, for six
years now, Devlin and Sue have lived on one of its precipices.
Bennett is sparse in his language, reflecting the laconic nature
of the place; a place where to say too much is to expend energy
-- something you just don't do in the heat. Yet like an artist
with mere pen and paper, he creates fully--rounded figures with
simple lines.
To read the talented Bennett's work is to breathe in the
eucalypts, hear the magpies warble, and occasionally flinch at
a kind of rough justice. ...
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