Waratah, NSW: Puncher and Wattmann, 2024, 322pp.
Alan Wearne’s new book stands somewhere between his other two books with unified narratives. The Nightmarkets was a set of dramatic monologues reflecting on a single story while The Lovemakers investigated the stories of a large set of characters. Mixed Business is seven monologues covering a number of different stories but put together they make up a kind of history of political and social life in the suburbs of Victoria from just before the first World War to just about the present day: let’s say a span of a century. Wearne’s poetry is always about this kind of documenting but the precise topic and the precise mode of approaching it vary.
Mixed Business begins with a portrait of a seminal figure in the whole narrative: Jean. She describes herself as a bluestocking with a bluestocking’s motto: “virago ever harpy never”. She isn’t, though, the voice of her monologue. That comes from an unnamed Englishman sent on a tour of the “Four Dominions” – Australia, Canada, South Africa and New Zealand (subtly distinguished from “the Colonies”) – to provide materials for journalism. He finds Jean the most interesting of the women he meets (she has three sisters as well as a brother who is soon to die in the war) and even, at one stage, proposes. But the lady is not for marrying and the monologue follows their relationship – an intense sympathetic friendship – right through until her death in the 1970s. The two interlocked issues are Australian identity and the role for women. Unlike her older sister – a representative of those seeing England as a mother country – Jean is a modern Australian. Her attitude to the English is interesting. In a letter she describes how her nieces ask how her “Englishman-beau” accommodated her views (code for “put up with her argumentativeness”) and she recalls telling them: “He is . . . that kind of Englishman who looks out, / sees beyond, tries understanding. Any other sort of Englishman, / or anyone, must be avoided”.
At twenty pages, this initial monologue is only a small part of Mixed Business but I’ve described it at some length because it sets up the entire book. It’s not entirely a loose metaphor to speak of her as a seminal character and it may be a deliberate piece of symbolism on Wearne’s part to make her father – the mayor of the area but definitely someone “in trade” – a seed-merchant. At any rate, many of the strong women who occur at different time periods in the book look like avatars of Jean. In most cases this might be through a genetic connection – Cath, the narrator of the third section in the book, “Post-War or My First Husband”, is her niece and Helen, the narrator of the fifth section, “Moonlight in Vermont South”, is Cath’s daughter. These two narratives are, incidentally, the core of the book and they are amazing achievements which constantly surprise by their inventiveness. Mixed Business is no po-faced exploration of politics and gender roles.
The second section, “The Gumsuckers”, follows Jock. In his youth he was a friend of Jean’s family providing musical entertainment. He is a friend of her brother but, unlike Teddy, he survives the first World War. The poem follows him on his first visit back to Australia in 1960 after a life as a composer, firstly of “serious” music and later of film scores – music is one of the threads that runs through Mixed Business. He is on a concert tour with his most recent wife, a world-famous concert pianist specialising in Mozart. Although he meets up with Jean, this is a section largely devoted to the issue of what Australia is as a country. He thinks of himself as Australian although he is infuriated by a lot of what he sees. Not as infuriated, however, as he is by ignorant English condescension:
. . . . .
Or should I tell them how
three, four, five times during those years
a film might arrive in London and I started knowing again
those trees, those plants, those kinds of houses,
some of the words and how they sound; except
what I was seeing and what I was hearing
were being conjured through British or American
eyes and ears, and I’d stamp into and out of the foyer
with my mock demands: “Please understand there is a way
for that country, that country there where I was born,
to be seen and heard! Not as yet another novelty land:
a form of Albania with amusing English,
an approximate Uruguay with odder fauna . . .” . . .
In a sense, he’s a failed artist, his career descending from difficult music – his second symphony is a hidden threnody for his friend Teddy – to film music which he describes as “tunesmith foolery, which paid the rent, / or some of it”.
The third section is one of the three long ones in the book and it, together with “Moonlight in Vermont South”, the fifth section, is one of the great achievements. Its structure is as complex as its characters. One way of describing it is to say that, at its core, it is the story of a couple, Cath and Lew, though focussing more on their individual lives than on their marriage. Cath, the narrator, though private schooled, wants to teach at a school in the new outer-western suburbs. Lew, a brilliantly successful advocate wants to enter politics, or perhaps, more accurately, wants to find a leftist party in which he can be at home. Cath’s experience as one of a number of women teachers at her school is very funny and a reminder of Wearne’s great sensitivity not only to women but to women teachers – perhaps teachers in general. The principal – “a man who thinks / he’s running Melbourne Grammar” – is a fine comic portrait of someone who is all ideals and no results. There is a running gag about the graders (probably a pun on teaching) which, after three years, have done precious little landscaping. When Cath eventually moves back to part-time teaching at her old school, the class distinction is emphasized:
. . . . .
“So,” I’d be quizzed,
with that brand of sympathy some women have been
bred to impart, “so how bad was it?”
No, it wasn’t bad,
my colleagues all tried to be professional,
if likable the children hardly extended one,
and if I tried The Boss remained forgettable.
“Of course there were the graders . . .”
Whatever they thought these graders were
they never asked so I never answered:
“As we have grounds staff, they have graders.”
Cath’s husband, Lew, is seen from the perspective of two of his friends, Will and Darky. His friendship with Will is founded in wartime experience in the RAAF and bridges very different social classes. Lew is the only child of a widow in Northcote, Will is from a wealthy family and was educated at Scotch College. They form – and here is part of Wearne’s genius that stops his work from being solemn explorations of various current issues – a jazz group called, “The Ding Dong Daddies”. It’s an utterly unexpected turn for the narrative to take and one can’t imagine it happening in, say, The Nightmarkets. It has its symbolic value – jazz being a freer form of music than the conventional parties are used to, involving co-operation and flexibility – but it also serves as an expression of that part of Will and Lew’s lives that lies outside what might be expected, the part that makes them, to some degree at least, mavericks. Will’s weakness is emotional – an odd marriage and an affair mark his card – and Lew’s flaw (apart from an increasing alcohol dependence) is a genuine, non-partisan belief in mateship: if someone is your friend, it hardly matters what their political position is. And the communist, Darky, is a maverick as well, famed for offering a spy, monitoring his activity by parking outside his house, some breakfast. It doesn’t go down well with the rigidly set rules of the post-war communist party and leads to interviews and threatened punishments. The scene in which the characters of all three men is laid out occurs when Lew arranges for the three of them to meet at the football. Lew and Darky support Collingwood and Will is a Melbourne supporter; another example of Wearne’s precision (as well as his devotion to Australian Rules football). The meeting is an assertion of mateship but an infringement of the unwritten laws of Labor, Liberal and Communist parties. In a sense the crisis point of this entire section occurs in 1960 when all three suffer career disappointments. Will and Lew are passed over for pre-selection and the more stable elements of their parties – called “The Cement-Heads” in the poem – triumph. The section ends with the important cultural event of the year 1960: the West Indian cricket tour where Australians learned to relove the game after an appallingly dull Ashes tour and where they also learned how to love an ethnic identity that wasn’t English, that was, in fact, black. It’s fitting that Lew should turn up at the Melbourne Town Hall reception for the tourists and sing. As I’ll say later, this move towards farce could be said to be enacted by the book as a whole.
“Post-War or My First Husband” is a brilliant extended piece and, with “Moonlight at Vermont South” – the fifth section – forms the core of the book, I think. Here we move to the next generation: the narrator, Helen, is Cath’s daughter. And the time has moved on through the Whitlam government (where Lew served as a minister “for something once” and is now “the Shadow Minister for Lurks, Perks and Jerks”) to the eve of the election of the Hawke government. The seat containing Vermont South is run by a smooth Liberal – fittingly called Bland – whom the Labor party has been unable to unseat. In this sequence we meet another maverick politician, Ingrid Curnow, who gains pre-selection and has enough style and energy to win the seat. But she turns out to be one of those political figures (I can think of a Labor Party leader at the beginning of this century) who impress initially but eventually run off the rails or who can be pushed off the rails by skilful opponents. Bob Hawke’s visit to Curnow’s house to meet all the election workers a week before the election is a fascinating piece of realpolitik. He comes at the request of Lew to whom, within a week or two, he will owe a favour: old, maverick figures like Lew are not going to be members of cabinet despite his standing – largely sentimental – within the party. We are also given a much-returned-to description of another of Lew’s escapades: after the dismissal of the Whitlam government, he jumped on the back of a ute to harangue the “bosses” and their minions. The themes of “Post-War or My First Husband” are pursued in this later time-frame. How are decent, committed activists to deal with the machines of the parties through which change is effected? And, though not explicitly, how are parties to deal with popular mavericks: we get to see Labour, Liberal and Communist party in action here, though only through the results of such actions. And just as in “Post-War or My First Husband” the climax is farcical rather than tragic. Ingrid Curnow (busy having sex with her campaign manager in a toilet while Hawke’s visit progresses) is caught by the press in “a drunken pub fracas” and loses the seat while the Labor party wins the election. Lew finishes the section by, as in “Post-War or My First Husband”, singing one of his songs: “Woe is me, shame and scandal in the ALP”.
Interspersed between these two major sections and the hundred page-long final, seventh section are two smaller pieces both of which have appeared before. “Breakfast with Darky” is a wonderful piece which gains a lot from appearing after “Post-War or My First Husband” because we have so much context to place it in. The narrator is someone who wrote realist fiction acceptable to the Party but who abandoned it, leaving a MS called “Breakfast with Darky” in his drawer. At Darky’s funeral, the narrator’s daughter asks about the Liberal party’s equivalent of mavericks like Darky. And the answer: “What do the bosses do / with all their Darkys? Parliament, Kim.” “Mixed Businessmen” which is placed between “Moonlight at Vermont South” and the final, “Yarraville Confidential or The Boyfriend Experience” looks out of place at first because it deals with a using teacher’s visit to the trial of his supplier. But he does take with him a friend – the more sober teacher, Bob – who will be an important figure in the final section. It also revisits the harmonies between the drug world and the political world which were so much a part of The Nightmarkets and The Lovemakers.
So, finally, to “Yarraville Confidential or The Boyfriend Experience” a monumental piece done if ottava rima, an interesting choice of Wearne’s part. It’s connection, in terms of characters, with the preceding pieces is slightly oblique. We meet the Deputy Premier of Victoria, Angela, and her husband and two daughters, one of whom, Hailey, provides the material of the section. It’s only half-way through that we find out that Hailey’s boyfriend, Lewie, is the son of Helen, the narrator of “Moonlight in Vermont South” which, I suppose, removes the structure of family saga from the spectrum of possible shapes for Mixed Business. The climax of the plot, a wrestling match between Marko, Labor candidate and developer of Tradie Town (in every sense an unusual Labor candidate) and his opponent Eddie Moon and the fact that Labor wins on the preferences of another candidate – Raen Bo (!) – who interprets the brawl as Marko’s attempt to preserve her honour and directs her preferences towards him, is high farce. As is Eddie’s spell as one of the hosts of the BoganFM breakfast show (his fellow-hosts are Dropkick and Fee-Bee).
And the choice of ottava rima – which I think Wearne loves as much as I do – is a good one. Ottava rima works by having a conventional quatrain which, in the fifth and six lines, is extended before the stanza is rounded off with a couplet: ABABABCC. There are many effects achievable in this form but the most common is a sense of expansion – in time, narrative or theme – in the fifth and sixth lines before the stanza is finished with a bathetic couplet. One of my favourites in this mode is Byron’s “Vision of Judgement” a comic piece about the death of George III. During that poem, Satan makes his way to the gates of heaven to make a bid for George’s soul:
. . . . .
As he drew near, he gazed upon the gate
Ne’er to be entered more by him or Sin,
With such a glance of supernatural hate,
As made Saint Peter wish himself within;
He pottered with his keys at a great rate,
And sweated through his Apostolic skin:
Of course his perspiration was but ichor,
Or some such other spiritual liquor.
A perfect example of a sardonic concluding couplet and entirely suited to Byron’s stance. The same can be said of his great long poem, Don Juan. Byron is distanced from his characters even when feeling warm towards them and so the sardonic key in ottava rima suits him perfectly: it’s a “pedestrian muse”, not suited to the flights of someone like Coleridge, but it has its place. It’s certainly matches Byron’s poetic personality better than the Spenserian stanzas of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. And it suits Wearne in this long section of Mixed Business where there is a mix of “serious” characters and idiots. And not only does Wearne quote Byron, to establish the link, he also exploits Byron’s dedication to Don Juan by allowing himself to enter the poem in its introduction. Whereas Byron’s opening stanzas very much about his poetic contemporaries, Wearne uses the opportunity to talk about his own poetry and its aims when he sends an imaginary email to Hailey, asking her to co-operate on his new project.
. . . . . I’ve followed your career and your romancing, so please forgive such literary stalking but that’s a risk I am forever chancing: to capture modes of thinking and of talking, the poet’s art which, if it works, enhancing. We’ve different minds to , let’s say, Stephen Hawking, a Galileo, Newton or an Einstein; plus better moral than a Harvey Weinstein. . .
Looked at as a whole, Mixed Business is, as its title says, mixed. Not in the sense of quality (“he had mixed success”) because it is brilliant, but rather in its structure. It could be described in a number of ways. As I’ve said, it avoids the unity of a saga through a family – Forsyte style – that’s something that might be attempted in a novel but its plan – to cover nation, gender, politics etc through the experiences of a number of generations sounds boring even as I write it. It could be seen as a three act piece with two poems of introduction and two other short pieces interspersed between the three major sections. To me, the thing that stands out is how unpredictable the narrative is. There are strong women and interesting, flawed men. The men are all mavericks, but mavericks can be established in a novel in very conventional ways. Wearne’s maverick men, especially Lew, are, in contrast, established in maverick ways. Who would have thought that two young friends from different backgrounds, on leaving the RAAF would form a jazz combo, or that Lew’s political immolation would involve jumping on a ute after the dismissal to harangue the bosses?
