Sunday, April 5, 2015

Relics, curiousities and autographs

Some of you may know, because I've banged on about it enough, that I've been writing an historical novel about the Breaksea Island sealing community of 1826. As usual for me there is no title yet - the title always seems to come last - an afterthought even. It's working title has been Exiles and Island Wives but I'm wary of the Wives bit, considering the circumstances of the Aboriginal women who lived with the sealers. Maybe Fire in the Water. Maybe. Dunno.

Anyway ... I've also been thinking about whether to include some notes that are relevant to certain scenes in the book. Notes or reference lists in novels and I share a problematic relationship - I like my fiction to be seamless thank you very much, made of invisible stitching. References can dismantle a reader's suspension of disbelief as readily as inaccurate incontrovertible facts in historical fiction. I want to be transported somewhere unknown by the narrative, to stay in that place and not be jolted home by a list of instructions as to how the story was put together.

But some of the notes I've cannibalised for the novel are so great. "Can a man really be swallowed by a whale?" asked my wrangler in the margins of a first draft. I sent her this quote:

The Star of the East was in the vicinity of the Falkland Islands and the lookout sighted a large Sperm Whale three miles away. Two boats were launched and in a short time one of the harpooners was enabled to spear the fish. The second boat attacked the whale but was upset by the lash of its tail and the men thrown into the sea, one man being drowned, and another, James Bartley, having disappeared, could not be found. The whale was killed and in a few hours was lying by the ship's side and the crew were busy with axes and spades removing the blubber. Next morning they attached some tackle to the stomach which was hoisted on deck. The sailors were startled by something in it which gave spasmodic signs of life, and inside was found the sailor doubled up and unconscious. He was laid on the deck and treated to a bath of salt water which soon revived him ... He remained two weeks a raving lunatic ... At the end of the third week he had entirely recovered from the shock and resumed his duties.
 Ambrose John Wilson, The Sign of the Prophet Jonah and its Modern Confirmation, vol. 25, Princeton Theological Review, 1927.

When Kevin and I moored the Tearaway at Investigator Island, I lay in my bunk and listened to the weirdest sounds against the hull. Maybe the tinkling, knocking noises were by electrostatic energy. Perhaps it was hundreds of tiny fish nibbling at the algal fouling.
Maybe it be Naiads ...





“What is that sound? Are we gaining water?” He asked Jimmy the Nail.
Jimmy lurched over the gear to find the tin bailer. He pulled coiled rope away from the stern and felt the planks. “No.”
“Then, what?”
Jimmy shrugged. “Naiads. Sea lice. Mr Thistle’s doomsayer. Go to sleep Billhook.”

Mr Thistle was a mate aboard the Investigator and a good friend of its captain Matthew Flinders. After charting Investigator Island and moving eastwards beyond Cape Arid, the names on Flinders map tend to mention Mr Thistle a lot, or such portents of doom as Cape Catastrophe. The day before Mr Thistle drowned, the two men caught a large yellow snake. While Flinders leaned on its neck with the butt of his rifle, Thistle sewed the snake's mouth shut with sail twine so they could take it as a live specimen without being bitten. As they walked over the spine of the island - Mr Thistle holding a rather pissed off seven foot snake - two enormous eagles roared out of the sky to attack them.

I just love everything about this passage in Flinders' journal. The imagery is quite biblical. I haven't used it in the novel but what I have alluded to is Mr Thistle's doomsayer, mentioned in a footnote on the day that Mr thistle drowned:

*This evening Mr Fowler told me a circumstance which I thought extraordinary; and afterwards it proved to be more so. whilst we were lying at Spithead, Mr thistle was one day waiting on shore, and having nothing else to do, he went to see a certain old man named Pine, to have his fortune told. The cunning man informed him that he was going out on a long voyage, and that the ship, on arriving at her destination, would be joined by another vessel. That such was intended, he may have learned privately; but he added, that Mr Thistle would be lost before the other vessel joined. As to the manner of his loss the magician refused to give any information. My boat's crew, hearing what Mr Thistle said, also went to consult the wise man; and after the prefatory information of a long voyage, were told that they would be shipwrecked, but not in the ship they were going out in; whether they would escape and return to England he was not permitted to reveal.
This tale Mr Thistle had told often at the mess table; and I remarked with some pain in a future part of the voyage, that every time my boat's crew went to embark with me on the Lady Nelson, there was some degree of apprehension amongst them that the time of the predicted shipwreck was arrived. I make no comment upon this story, but recommend a commander, if possible, to prevent any of his crew from consulting fortune tellers.
Matthew Flinders, Terra Australis, Text, 2012, p. 83.

Flinders wrote this whilst suffering the gravel in his waters and locked up by the disaffected Decaen on Mauritius. What he doesn't mention here is that his next ship indeed foundered; the Porpoise sailing into the Great Barrier Reef along with her fellow traveller the Cato.





17 comments:

  1. So a whale can swallow a human after all, not just krill. A friend of mine has just got back from New Orleans, where she was told a number of things by a palmist fortune-teller. The last thing was that she was going to suffer a horrible accident from which she would survive. I thought they were supposed to say, "I see nothing!" when they saw stuff like this.

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    1. Yes, well as you can see Flinders was not too happy about it and warned other expedition leaders to keep their crew away from soothsayers!
      Sperm whales have teeth instead of baleen and they eat those enormous squid, so I guess they'd be capable of swallowing a man. It's a great yarn anyway.

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    2. Sperm whales are the biggest whales not to have a baleen, are they not?

      I think Moby Dick was supposed to be a giant sperm whale, wasn't he?

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    3. I think, yes, both of those things Alex

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  2. You HAVE to put that stuff in Sarah. Because readers can decide themselves whether to interrupt the narrative or read on. I for one would read the whole thing through first, and then, on the second reading, would take time out for all of those great little anecdotes.

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    1. Cheers Michelle. I was thinking about putting them at the end of the novel, as thee little 'mirrors' held up to the fiction. Not sure yet.

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    2. I vote for putting them at the end. They're too good to leave out.

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  3. I like my fiction to be seamless too, and am wrangling with similar questions over my book. I'm thinking no notes (I don't have such references anyway); also am thinking really minimal acknowledgements, like one short paragraph, not a huge list of thank yous. What will you do?

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    1. Not sure yet Melba. I'll definitely include them as part of the thesis.

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    2. Also, Melba, sorry I didn't complete my answer to you ... Salt Story had a pretty extensive list of acknowledgements and in a way, they served as a kind of 'ephemera'. I like that page. But I also like novels (particularly debut ones) that are mysteriously bereft of such things, to rely on the text alone.
      One novelist's acknowledgement I'll never forget is David Vann's Legend of a Suicide, where the thank you's actually give the novel a whole new meaning.

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    3. The acknowledgements in my thesis were critical. The whole thing revolved around the suicide of one woman. And the support I got through the whole thing was also critical - seeing as I went to hell and back.

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  4. Yes, at the end! I.e. no in-text markers (end notes, etc.), but an appendix (even if you don't call it that) -- you can always divide the appendix into the chapters each of the 'mirrors' relates to so the reader can back-reference, but by avoiding references throughout you make sure that reading experience is certainly seamless. I love these kinds of details as a reader. And if the publisher wasn't keen on the idea, you could always move it online -- have a weblink in your bio or at the end of the book where you periodically post those enticing bits of research... that's my vote, anyway :-)

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  5. Thank you Ms PoW and great to hear from you. I like the idea of calling them the same as the title of this post. Originally I was thinking 'ephemera' and then looked it up. 'Relics, curiousities and autographs' was the first definition I came across. And I agree with the avoiding references. My life seems so full of footnotes and end notes, I never want to look at another one again.

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  6. As one who has avoided post degree studies I have not used a footnote in 40 years. I am also in the depths of an historical novel and wrestling with truth and fiction. In my case (at this stage) I have decided to leave all my research and quotes in my filing system and use a few as introductions to chapters - hoping to leave a few clues to what inspired some of the writing. I don't like having my attention distracted by extraneous thoughts or references as I read. I am "in the story". Even facts that seem unlikely (on the basis of previous reading or knowledge) can throw me. I may use a postscript to bring the reader back to the real world in my novel; possibly a few links to sources though I haven't really considered this at any length. I'm thinking that people can do their own research if their interest is really fired up. Interesting. Author's notes at the end can be interesting - after I've read the book. I never read introductions and prefaces.

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    1. You have a filing system? I must get one :~)

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  7. I may have exagerrated! More like a pile of papers on a table.

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  8. Ahh! So I am not the only disheveled historian with a messy mind and messier desk.
    Excellent!

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