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Literary Review
All for love
AT forty, Georgie Jutland is in a bit of a mess. She lives in a claustrophobic fishing community — White Point — with a fisherman she does not love and his two children who do not love her. She stays up whole nights drinking vodka and surfing the Internet where she encounters chatrooms overflowing with the "daughters of Indian diplomats who wanted to converse like Lisa Simpson."
One morning, before any of the fishermen are up, she spots someone lurking on the beach below; Lu Fox, a poacher, socially isolated like Georgie herself, and Georgie are attracted to each other and there begins, between the two of them, a curious relationship.
Winton's epic and brilliant seventh novel brings together two unlikely worlds; the solitary grandeur of the novels of Conrad and Defoe mingles with the post-modern universe of De Lilo — shattered relationships, new beginnings, each marriage littered with debris from several previous marriages. Reading Dirt Music one is reminded of other classic "downward spiral" accounts — Roy Heath's The Murderer, Patrick Hamilton's Hangover Square, not to mention the mother of them all — Zola's L'Assomoir. Except that here, just before the ball of wool unravels completely, there is a little tug; there is hope that the chaos of string lying on the floor might, once again, become a coherent ball of wool.
Winton's descriptions of the North Australian landscape are reminiscent of what Naipaul does with the African landscape in In A Free State — descriptions so precise and incredible at the same time that they make you question the representational nature of writing. Sometimes, one worries about how successful words have been in describing an external reality; with Winton, one wonders whether the actual landscape can ever match up to the almost Platonic perfection achieved by his fine descriptive prose.
Towards the end, as Lu slips into a delirium brought on by solitude, and the lack of proper food, shelter and books (even though Lu is a poacher, he is extremely fond of Blake and Melville), Winton shifts gears. The climax, with all its moments of high drama and nail-biting tension, is classic adventure story stuff. Winton has a knack for these endings; this gift was on display in his early short novel, In the Winter Dark.
Dirt Music is also about how fragile our lives are. When Georgie barges into Lu's routine-shielded new life (he has lost his family), it bothers, even scares him. He tries to understand his fear: "You put up a tent to make a space you can deal with. You know the whole night's still out there ... and you understand how thin the fabric is, what a pissy pretence you hold to, but with your tent blown open you feel more exposed than if you'd lain down on your mat beneath the stars. You can't see what's coming."
Still, even if it is difficult to put a finger on the exact nature of love (" It arrived and moved on like weather and defied pursuit."), there are always smaller, simpler pleasures which seem to make life worthwhile: "Fox steps off the verandah with an old butcher knife honed away to a crescent. He rolls one off the crate, strikes it with his knuckles and rejoices at the healthy sound it makes. He slips the knife in and feels the melon sigh as it falls open. It gives off a sweet musk which causes the hair to rise along his arms."
This is a haunting book; the pasts of its various characters will linger with the reader years after the last page has been turned. And the possibilities of love and hope that the novel espouses will keep the world turning long after the last reader is dead.
Dirt Music, Tim Winton, Picador, 2002, p. 465, £16.99.
PALASH KRISHNA MEHROTRA
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