Despite all the careful financial planning, Henry was finding funds tight now that he was a free man in the free world, unencumbered by employment. Together with Dr Bee and Pawley, he had spent many a lunch looking into early retirement. A major collaborative research project over an eighteen month period. Two years, even. Checking the figures. Double checking. Phoning up the superannuation fund. Meeting advisers. Comparing notes. It had all sounded good, at the time.

He examined his options. Take a teaching position somewhere. Offer a creative writing class. He felt sick at the very idea. Even with travel thrown in. North America. The third world. His stomach wrenched, intimations of reflux, a fever of anxiety.
'Have a tablet,' Dr Bee offered. He took a packet of pills from his pocket.

Pawley produced a cookie wrapped in aluminium foil.

Henry declined both and poured himself a glass of red wine.

'Even talking about not doing it makes me ill,' he said.

'The way the mind works,' Pawley explained. 'It disregards positive and negatives. It just registers "teaching" and goes into spasm. Trauma. Shut-down.'

Dr Bee took the pill himself.

'Lest your symptoms prove contagious,' he told Henry.

'The only other thing I can think of is applying for a grant,' Henry said.

'You've changed your tune,' said Dr Bee. 'After all those years of inveighing against writers' fellowships.'

'It wasn't worth it when I was teaching,' said Henry. 'Didn't anywhere near match my salary. I tried it one year, cost me a fortune.'

'So,' said Pawley, 'the age of compromise. Welcome to the world of self-censorship.'

'Not necessarily,' said Henry.

'Inevitably,' said Pawley. 'You soften your position. No social criticism. No political angle. You refashion yourself as a safe grant recipient. And it all serves the interests of control. Suppress dissent. Induce complicity.'

'I am not without integrity,' said Henry, since no one else was going to say it for him.

'There's still time to change,' said Dr Bee. 'Despite all those years of denunciation.'

'So what if you contradict yourself,' said Pawley.

'You contain multitudes,' said Dr Bee.

'Multitudes of books,' said Henry. 'Certainly.'

'Just contain them,' said Dr Bee.

'I'm going to need a letter of support,' said Henry.

'Shouldn't be too hard to fake,' said Dr Bee. 'Use your skills. If you can't come up with something like that, what hope have you as a creative writer?'

'They require an independent assessment.'

'Just put yourself in the mind-set of another character,' Dr Bee recommended. 'Pretend you're writing fiction. In fact you wouldn't have to pretend. It would be fiction.'

'I'd rather get someone else to do it.'

'Wouldn't we all,' said Dr Bee. 'As for living, our servants can do that for us.'

'Couldn't you write something?'

'Would I have to read something?'

'Well -'

'Just Henry's novel and the Council's two hundred page manual of instructions for funding applications,' said Pawley. 'It would fill up your insomniac nights. Might turn out to be a cure.'

'What would you want me to say?'

'Whatever you felt,' said Henry.

'How can I know if you won't tell me? You don't expect me to read one of your manuscripts?'

'Well, yes.'

'And the manual,' Pawley reminded them.

'That would be two books to read.'

'Is that too much to ask?'

'Yes,' said Dr Bee.

'From a former academic in English Literature?'

'Absolutely.'

'All right,' said Henry. 'I can draft it for you. I’ll send you an email.'

'I don't have email,' said Dr Bee.

Henry turned to Pawley.

'Computer's stuffed. In at the vet's.

'I'll print it out,' said Henry. 'All you need to do is sign it and fax it.'

'No fax,' said Dr Bee.

'Use the department fax.'

'Then I'd have to go back in there. No way.'

'I'll give you a stamped addressed envelope,' said Henry.

'Why do you need us?’ Pawley asked. 'Why not just do it yourself?'

'They ask for an independent assessment.'

'Still -,' said Pawley. 'Do you have a copy of it here?'

Henry did his diffident act.

'Cough it up,' Dr Bee instructed.

Henry reached into his briefcase and produced a couple of sheets of A4, giving one to each of them.

'Sounds like a work of genius,' said Dr Bee, scanning the sheet.

Henry smiled modestly

Pawley held it out at arm's length and peered at it. 'What's it actually for? he asked.

'For money, clearly,' said Dr Bee.

'But is it for a fellowship? Or for a publication subsidy? Or self-publication? Are your resorting to self-publishing, Henry?'

'Absolutely not.'

'Not yet, anyway,' Pawley interpreted. 'Though it reads like it could be.'

'It's sort of flexible.'

'Like employment these days,' said Pawley. 'Contemporary double-speak for job insecurity.'

'I'm keeping my options open,' said Henry. 'I don't want to be troubling you all the time.'

'No trouble,' said Dr Bee. 'You don't need to worry about that. You'll be the first to hear if it's trouble.'

'Exactly,' said Henry. 'So I thought a multi-purpose letter.'

'Multi-skilling,' said Pawley. 'As we call it now.'

'Something like that.'

'So we could be signing anything,' said Dr Bee. 'You could be asking for a grant, travel money, publication subsidy, bank loan, second mortgage, troubled assets relief program, any of it.'

Henry nodded.

'What's it worth?' Pawley asked.

Henry looked offended.

Pawley picked up the empty bottle and waved it in the air.

'You want me to order another bottle?' Henry asked.

The waiter was already approaching.

'Yes,' Pawley agreed.

'And pay for it,' Dr Bee added.

'And then you'll sign?'

'Let's see what you order first,' said Dr Bee.

'Something good,' said Pawley. 'Don't be cheap. Something worthy of your genius.'

'Something concomitant to your needs,' said Dr Bee. 'And ours, of course. We wouldn't want to come too cheaply and undermine our credibility.'

'Just imagine you're British Aerospace selling to Saudi Arabia,' said Pawley. 'A man's got to do what a man's got to do.'

'Put up or shut up,' Dr Bee elaborated. 'Think yourself lucky we're not in one of those downtown restaurants with $1,000 bottles of wine beloved by bankers and brokers in the bad old days.'

'We could go to one,' Pawley offered.

*

Henry took his manuscript from his briefcase. He held it out to Dr Bee, who made no move to take it. Indeed, he folded his arm determinedly, as if it might have had a hex embedded in it, or be contaminated with polonium 123. Pawley similarly failed to reach out, occupied himself with scratching, searching for ticks and leaches no doubt from his rural hide-away.

'What's that you've got there, Henry?' he asked.

'The novel.'

'The novel? By whom?'

'Me, of course.'

'Which one?'

'The one I'm applying for funds for.'

'You've already written it?'

'Most of it.'

‘Completed?’ said Dr Bee.

‘Well, not fully.’

‘Open ended,’ suggested Pawley.

‘Something like that,’ Henry agreed.

‘Still a way to go.’

‘Could be.’

‘You’re not sure?’

‘It depends,’ said Henry.’

‘On whether you get funding?’

‘Well –,’ said Henry.

'So why do you need funds to write it, if it’s completed?' Dr Bee asked.

‘It’s not quite completed,’ said Henry. ‘But you always do it that way. Standard institutional practice. Or at least it used to be. In the university.'

'What was?'

'Having the project completed before you applied for funding. That way you knew it would work out. You knew you had something to say. And it could be said. You'd already said it.'

'So what are the funds for?'

'For the next project.'

'And what is the point of this elaborate chicanery?' Dr Bee asked.

'Well, to make sure you produce something with the grant. If you’ve already written it, then you will be sure you can produce something.'

'Does anyone care?'

'It was easier to get another grant if you'd got something to show for the previous one.’

'But not now.'

'Not now, no. Now the whole point lies in getting the million dollar grants. Shows you're important. No matter if you never produce any results.'

'But arts funding is not like this?' Dr Bee asked.

'I don't really know.'

'You do, but you're in denial,' said Pawley.

'And you expect us to support your request for a million dollars?'

'Nothing like that amount,' said Henry.

'Why not?' Dr Bee asked.

'If you're going to do it, do it big,' said Pawley.

'Of course,' said Pawley, 'you could be really despicable and apply to do a doctorate in creative writing and then get a university scholarship.'

'Become a graduate student again,' said Dr Bee, discouragingly.

'I never was a graduate student,' said Henry.

'Well, there you are, then. Finally get yourself an unnecessary qualification in the twilight of your years. Assuming you complete, that is.'

'Get yourself some money, too,' said Pawley.

'Take the scholarship that might have gone to someone more deserving. Some struggling young student,' said Dr Bee with uncharacteristic concern for the poor and young. ‘Part of the middle-class welfare program.’

Henry pondered. It was not that he was undeserving, after all. But then there was the issue of going back onto campus. Being supervised. Compulsory seminars, probably. Maybe there was somewhere he could do it by distance education. Send in his drafts by email. Get the scholarship paid by electronic fund transfer. No harm in looking into it.

*

How different was the Writers' Centre. How different the Director's response. None of that ingrained academic negativity.
'Of course, Henry,' she said. 'Any time. What do you want me to say?'

'Well -' he hesitated.

'Modesty forbids?'

'Well -'

'You need the money, is that it?'

'Well, yes.'

'You could teach a workshop. Do some mentoring.'

'I'd rather not, if it's all the same to you.'

'It's not all the same,' the Director assured him.

'Still -'

'That novel of yours,' the Director said.

'Yes?' said Henry. 'You read it?'

'All this material about the Writers' Centre,' she said.

'Ah, yes,' said Henry, tentatively.

'Just remind me never to tell you anything about things here ever again.'

'Really?' he said.

'I don't want confidential business turning up in your fiction.'

'No one will believe it,' Henry assured her.

'I'll be the judge of that,' she said. 'I'm just not telling you anything ever again.'

'Really?' he said.

'Really.'

No more cash flow crises with phone calls first thing in the morning breaking into his writing, no more crisis management at the weekend, no more staff problems reaching into the night.

'Never again,' she said.

He restrained himself from asking whether that was a promise. Even if he didn't get the grant, at least some good had come out of his application. Some benefits had already accrued.

'Apart from that,' she said, 'it doesn't have a proper ending.'

He groaned. But inwardly. There were Dr Bee and Pawley complaining that the book he wanted funds to write was already completed, and now the Director was complaining it didn’t have a proper ending.

'It's not finished yet. I'm applying for a grant to finish it.'

'You're applying for a grant so you can keep going out to lunch with those dithering old men,' she said.

'Can't not eat. Anyway, if you took me out to lunch more often, I wouldn't have to spend so much time with them, would I?'

'The Centre can't afford you, Henry. That's why I'm supporting your application. However,' she said.

'What do you mean, however?' Henry asked. Sometimes he hated the word.

'I noticed it before in your last book. That didn't have a proper ending, either.'

'Proper ending? What do you mean? You sound like Miss Martha Buskbody.'

'And who might she be?'

'In Old Mortality. She complained to Walter Scott that "your plan of omitting a formal conclusion will never do”.'

'I just like a good ending,' she said. 'Everything all properly wrapped up.'

'I can't do that,' Henry protested.

'Why not?'

'In a novel about ageing?'

'And arts bureaucracies,' she added.

'The central issues of our time,' he agreed.

'Your time,' she said. 'Such as you have left.'

'That's exactly it,' said Henry. 'Closure would only mean one thing.'

'And what's that?'

'Well, closure. The end. Finis.'

'Death. In a word. Is that what you mean?'

'I didn't want to spell it out.'

'That's a bit depressing,' the Director agreed. 'You need to be more positive. Take exercise. Don't drink so much.'

'I know,' said Henry.

'All I'm suggesting is a proper plot. Properly wound up.'

'In a winding sheet,' said Henry. 'I'm too old for plots. The only plot left is a burial plot.'

This was a theme that did not want closure. That positively resisted closure. Closure was the last thing wanted. Any ending was not to be sought for and best never reached. Best deferred as long as deferral could defer itself. A song without ending. An unfinished symphony. Schubert’s eighth. Schubert’s seventh and tenth, for that matter. Mahler’s tenth. Elgar’s third. Mozart’s Requiem. Puccini’s Turandot. Berg’s Lulu. Even Bach’s Art of Fugue. Old man river, just keeping on rolling. A shelf without book-ends. A bottomless bottle of Chateau Roman. The immortal story. The never-ending novel. To hell with Classical form. In some circumstances post-modern indeterminacy was much more attractive, aesthetically and otherwise.

This was one of them.

***

‘Henry’s Novel’ is an episode from Michael Wilding’s Superfluous Men, forthcoming from Arcadia.

About the Author

Michael Wilding is the author of Wildest Dreams, The Phallic Forest, Academia Nuts and many, many other wicked works of fiction. His next publication, The Prisoner of Mount Warning, is being released through a unique publishing initiative: Press On. Press On is the initiative of a number of novelists, publishers & booksellers to intervene actively in the publication & promotion of new fiction in Australia.

Adopting the classic 18th & 19th century strategy of subscription publishing that worked for Henry Kendall & others, it needs just 200 subscribers to get the first three titles of this innovative, exciting program into print & onto the web.

Subscribe now for $50 ($80 overseas) and save a third off the recommended retail price on the first three titles.

Discover more about these new novels by: Peter Corris (Wishart’s Quest), Michael Wilding (The Prisoner of Mount Warning), Phillip Edmonds (Leaving Home with Henr), & Inez Baranay (With The Tiger) 

just press on www.press-on-publishing.net

For More Information:

phone Michael Wilding in Sydney (02) 9979 7689,

or Phillip Edmonds in Adelaide 0407728401,

or email Michael Wilding or Phillip Edmonds

issue 09:04 | archives by category | archives by author