Status Updates From Theory & Practice

His wife believed that over many years of working as an editor in a publishing house, he’d come to confuse realism with reality. It was her opinion that he was looking to life for the satisfactions provided by novels: the possibility of redemption, answers and patterns, motive and cause [...] Life was random and cruel, she said, and she’d lost patience with his unwillingness to face that fact.

Kerry Negara, an Australian living in Bali, made a documentary called A Loving Friend about the artist’s Sanur domain. Released in 2009, it can now be viewed online. It includes interviews with four middle-aged Balinese men who knew Friend or belonged to his household. https://youtu.be/5ArLFmOTFlQ?si=_3aGd...

"Obviously the occasion called for mauling our mothers. As daughters, it was our duty and our fate to disappoint [[our mothers]], we agreed, and we swore we’d go on doing so. We howled and howled, and tears ran down our cheeks. Etsuko played keyboards in Says Ann. She was ripping up and howling too, but then she broke off. She asked, ‘Does anyone want to end up like her father instead?’"

"Obviously the occasion called for mauling our mothers. As daughters, it was our duty and our fate to disappoint [[our mothers]], we agreed, and we swore we’d go on doing so. We howled and howled, and tears ran down our cheeks. Etsuko played keyboards in Says Ann. She was ripping up and howling too, but then she broke off. She asked, ‘Does anyone want to end up like her father instead?’"

‘Everything French was an affront to the English department,’ I explained. ‘And the French department’s Contemporary Theory unit was taught by a guy who specialised in Sade. At the start of my honours year, he was identified as the campus rapist and arrested. I’m pretty sure the unit’s still on hold.’ ‘Sydney is so backward,’ Lenny said with Melbourne glee.

"As I recalled thrashing about in the messy gap between [[theory and practice]], I began to see that my novel had stalled because it wasn’t the book I needed to write. The book I needed to write concerned breakdowns between theory and practice, and the material was overwhelming. Particles of it had entered my novel and jammed up its works."