Kill your darlings N E W F I C T I O N | C O M M E N TA R Y | E S S AY S | R E V I E W S
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Kill Your Darlings PO Box 271, Seddon West Victoria, 3011, Australia Email: info@killyourdarlingsjournal.com Web: www.killyourdarlingsjournal.com Kill Your Darlings 22, 2015 Publishing Directors Rebecca Starford and Hannah Kent Editor-in-Chief Rebecca Starford Editor Brigid Mullane Deputy Editor Hop Dac Online Editor Veronica Sullivan Online Deputy Editor Samantha Forge Interviews Editor Gerard Elson Marketing Coordinator Briony Kent Editorial Assistants Meaghan Dew, Ashleigh Hanson Published by Kill Your Darlings Pty Ltd This collection © Kill Your Darlings 2015 ISBN 978-0-9941638-7-5, ISSN 1837-638X All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise without the prior permission of Kill Your Darlings. The views and opinions expressed by individual authors are not necessarily those of the editors. Cover illustration: Guy Shield Design and layout: © Kill Your Darlings 4VMRXIH ERH FSYRH F] +VMJ½R 4VIWW Kill Your Darlings accepts unsolicited submissions. Please visit the website for all guidelines.
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.
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CONTENTS 5
Editorial COMMENTARY
9
Death Trends | Hashtag Activism and the Rise of Online Grief Gillian Terzis investigates how social media affects grief and the ways we mourn.
25
In Search of Lost Sleep | Through the Fog of Fatigue Eleanor Hogan searches for a cure to the insomnia that has dogged her for years.
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The Anzac Myth | Holocaust Denial and the Birth of the Australian Nation On the centenary of the Anzac landing at Gallipoli, Tim Robertson looks at an often ignored element of the Anzac legend.
8LI 8EWQERMER &S] ` % 7LYJžI SJ XLI (IGO Jessie Cole recalls an unexpected encounter.
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The Privilege of Starvation | On Art and Creative Writing Courses Omar Sakr looks at the myth of the starving artist.
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A Conscious Choice | Remaining Childfree in an Uncertain World Diane White speaks to people who choose to remain childless for environmental reasons.
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The Importance of Being Hairy | Waxing, Shaving and Other Unnecessary Thrills %VE 7EVE½ER learns to accept his hirsuteness.
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FICTION 105
Those Who Know We Are Here | Jessica Au
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The Race | Sonja Dechian
INTERVIEW 137
Gerard Elson in Conversation with Nick Cave
REVIEWS 167
No Such Thing As Monsters | Shirley Jackson and the Unspeakable Everyday Carody Culver revisits Shirley Jackson’s seminal short story, ‘The Lottery’.
181
Words, Flesh and Tech | Contemporary Literature and Our Future Selves Rachel Hennessy looks at intimacy and anxiety in the recent novels of Dave Eggers, Michel Faber and Margaret Atwood.
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EDITORIAL
W
elcome to Issue 22 of Kill Your Darlings. As we go to print, the arts community is reeling from recent cuts to Australia Council funding. As proud recipients of Australia Council funding, Rebecca Starford and Hannah Kent have penned an open letter, which helps illuminate the issue. I encourage you to read the letter on our website and sign the petition. In this issue we celebrate everything that Kill Your Darlings does best – made possible by the support of our funders and our readers – promoting great, Australian writing. In this issue’s lead feature ‘Death Trends: Hashtag Activism and the Rise of Online Grief ’, Gillian Terzis looks at the changing ways in which we experience and publicise grief. On the back of the outpouring of public mourning for the murders of Jill Meagher, Masa Vukotic and Stephanie Scott, Gillian looks at what it means to grieve online, and examines if public grief is ever a real impetus for change. Elsewhere in Commentary, Tim Robertson looks at the Armenian genocide and our blind spot in the Anzac legend. Omar Sakr examines the myth of the starving artist, and how the perception of the writer as a tragic figure creates barriers to the actual creation of art. Eleanor Hogan battles with sleeplessness in her inquisitive look
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6 | Kill Your Darlings, Issue 22
at insomnia, while Diane White interviews people who have chosen to be childless for environmental reasons. We have a moving piece of memoir from Jessie Cole and a humorous look at hairiness from Ara Sarafian. In Fiction, the issue features a new story from Jessica Au entitled ‘Those Who Know We Are Here’, and we also have an extract from Sonja Dechian’s upcoming short story collection, An Astronaut’s Life. In Interview, we were lucky to secure an extended interview with Nick Cave. In this illuminating discussion, our interviewer and Nick Cave cover everything from song creation to Miley Cyrus to dolphin penises. It’s funny and frank and an absolute pleasure to read. In Reviews, Carody Culver revisits Shirley Jackson’s lauded short story ‘The Lottery’, and looks at the horror within, while Rachel Hennessy looks at the depiction of human intimacy in Dave Eggers’s, Margaret Atwood’s and Michel Faber’s latest books. Happy reading! Brigid Mullane | Editor
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COMMENTARY KYD ISSUE 22.indd 7
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‘Social media is by nature performative, it’s a marketplace in which we publicly jostle for ranking and approval.’
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| 9
DEATH TRENDS ,ĂƐŚƚĂŐ ĐƟǀŝƐŵ ĂŶĚ ƚŚĞ ZŝƐĞ ŽĨ KŶůŝŶĞ 'ƌŝĞĨ
Gillian Terzis
I
n the days leading up to April 29, my social media feeds were dominated by scores of doleful messages imploring Indonesian President Joko Widodo to extend clemency to the condemned Australian drug smugglers Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran. Some held candlelight vigils and uploaded them to Instagram. Others chose to use a memespiration-like graphic with the text ‘Because I’m not the person I was 10 years ago and neither are they’ accompanied with the hashtag #IStandForMercy, and posted it on Facebook. An emotionally-charged video – set to a plaintive piano melody – also did the rounds, in which local celebrities pleaded with the prime minister to ‘bring these boys home’ and ‘show some balls’ – platitudes that were in tune with the country’s broader emotional barometer but out
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10 | Kill Your Darlings, Issue 22
of step with the realpolitik of foreign relations. Indeed, a few actors solemnly declared that ‘the time for diplomacy is over’. More haunting, at least for me, was the image Sukumaran had painted of a bleeding human heart, which was signed by all nine prisoners awaiting execution. Our constant connection to the news and to the opinions of others means that grief can easily become a viral phenomenon. I was in Jakarta on the day Chan and Sukumaran were transferred to Nusa Kambangan, an island off the southern coast of Java that is home to four active prisons, most of which were built by the Dutch before Indonesia’s independence. It’s where former president Suharto imprisoned political dissidents and communist sympathisers, many of whom were left to languish for years, and where high-profile offenders – terrorists, drug traffickers and the like – await their death by firing squad. When, a few days later, I’d heard through journalists in Jakarta that two coffins had arrived at the Australian embassy, it was hard to imagine a trajectory other than the one that would cause us distress. I dreaded the execution, but I also dreaded the ensuing response and the hectoring op-eds to come. ‘We do not need to spare feelings for fear of being seen as arrogant westerners or hold back because Australia is so far from perfect – witness our treatment of asylum seekers, witness the outrage of phone tapping the former Indonesian president’s wife,’ Gay Alcorn wrote in a highly emotive op-ed in The Guardian, before calling for a Bali boycott. I shared Alcorn’s horror over the
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