mid to late jan 2011

25 Jan 2011: I am trying to start the habit of blogging into the future. If I keep this up I will NEVER REALLY DIE, at least not in blogworld, except of course my blog posts into the future will eventually run out and then I WILL REALLY DIE. I wonder what blogger actually 'is' and whether it will outlive me.

I am in the final throes (I hope) of finishing my short book currently known as The Bogan Delusion. I am at the point where I am 4/5 finished but feeling a crisis of confidence, now being so immersed in what I have to say that I feel like it's not worth saying and uncertain whether I believe it or not. I am at the point where I have railed against class hatred, but then go on to talk about why I have every reason to feel class hatred if anyone does. I'm glad I wrote that down, it now seems a lot more easy to deal with.

I am also over where I would expect to be word count wise at this point in the book, so I can start pruning and culling a bit, which is a relief and a pleasure. This morning I have taken Barry and Charlie out, put some washing on the line, put some clothes away, thrown some mouldy things out that were in the fridge, and fussed around on the internet putting up pictures of Barry etc - time wasting.

I wonder what it will be like in 10 years' time and whether every second conversation will be about Facebook. Annabel last week said she was fed up with facebook and it was a great relief to not have it in her life and I thought about this for a couple of days and then emailed her saying however much you hate/blame the messenger you are cut out of people's lives if you don't get involved in things like that. Hopefully in 10 years we won't be talking about it constantly however.

a year ago today: publicity for the bogan delusion

Tomorrow is, I think, the absolute last publicity commitment. Strangely, it was almost the first one undertaken - I was booked for this months ago. I'm going to be on a show on 3CR.

Today however I got a call out of the blue from a journalist on the Dandenong Leader, who interviewed me for a long time about Doveton, which I write about quite extensively in the book. We talked for ages, then we got cut off somehow, then we talked for ages again later in the day. It was fine.

a year ago today: publicity for the bogan delusion

People at work keep coming up to me and talking about bogans. I have no idea who some of them are.

There was an opinion piece in the Age this morning critiquing pop-culture opinion programs. It singled out Can of Worms for equating the putative existence of bogans with that of God, I wonder if this came from the title of my book, but I didn't see the program so I'm not sure.

a year ago today: publicity for the bogan delusion

Publicity is tapering off, I assume, even if television is catching on. On Saturday I did the MTR interview as mentioned, then yesterday I did the final capital city ABC of all - Hobart. It was a good half hour, and very enjoyable, so I didn't mind too much basically devoting my Tuesday evening to the whole thing. The interviewer had gone round her office (I think?) asking random (?) people what a bogan was and once again my point was proven - everybody gave different viewpoints. And ultimately the only commonality was a mullet, and I said I am quite often in Tasmania ('because I love it' - I thought that was a nice touch and also true) and I have never seen anyone with a mullet. Then I went off on a strange little tangent, even as a voice in my head was saying not to, talking about how in 20 years maybe when we're all celebrating the fabulous days of the bogans everyone will have mullet wigs.

Television is catching on because apparently my book was mentioned on The Circle on Monday morning prepping the world for discussion of 'is "bogan" a slur' on the new show Can of Worms which was premiering that night. The actual COW didn't mention my book at all, though, I'm told. I don't care but Martin Hughes was pretty cross I gather.

No doubt I've said this before but I'm ready to move on, really. I have two more interviews - both public radio - Perth and Melbourne. Then that's it.

a year ago today: publicity for the bogan delusion

I was most gratified by a good review in the Spectator. Even if it was short, and my pleasure a little problematised by the fact that the reviewer compared my book favourably to Owen Jones’ Chavs book which I didn’t necessarily need to happen (at the same time, I did kind of note that Jones somewhere, somehow is attributed with comparing himself to Orwell, which seems a bit Icarusy to me). Jones and Imogen Tyler, who I discussed (i.e. ‘used’) a little bit in my book were on Laurie Taylor’s Thinking Allowed on Radio 4 last week. I’d sent Taylor a copy of my book a few weeks ago, with the hint-hint that I’d be in London in September, and Jones is aware of my book, so I was hoping they’d mention it but nope.

My grandmother Marion would have loved me getting a review in the Spectator, favourable or otherwise, because she read it every week. Though she would for all that have probably not agreed with my book (I’m not sure; it’s hard to imagine her responding to 2011, particularly as she more or less disengaged from daily events in the final years of her life, so I’m used to memories of her not caring about what was going on outside her four walls).

I am writing this en route to my third (I think) commercial radio interview, at MTR (Melbourne Talk Radio – I’d never heard of it – used to be 3MP, which I listened to a lot when I was 11 or 12). It’s Glenn Ridge’s show, I’m only vaguely aware of who he is, too, which would only make sense to me via who he was – a tv game show host or something similar? That’s what I told Mia anyway, now I’m starting to doubt it.

Late: so I went to do the Ridge show, and it was fine – the guys on the show were pretty slick, and I was fairly scattered in my responses, but I imagine that’s OK – the important thing probably is not to seem smug or pompous. The whole thing had a cloud over it though, because there were police all over the station because someone had died in the building overnight, probably a suicide. When I got there the producer mentioned all the cops and I said, what’s that about and she said you don’t want to know, but then later when I was in the control room a panel operator came in and talked all about it, occasionally casting glances at me. The person who died had motor neurone disease, he was 60 and apparently there had been some kind of party the previous week after which he had called to thank everyone who had come, and there was a theory that he’d been saying goodbye to everyone. He’d done his show that morning and then he had died somewhere on the premises. I thought the staff I was talking to there were a bit in shock but they were coping.

So I did the Ridge show and it was fun. Unlike Fidler, they hadn’t read the book and I should be regarding that more as an opportunity (the difference is, I suppose, if the interviewer has read the book they become your collaborator in presenting your ideas to the audience; if they don’t know anything about it, you have to scrub away at their unknowingness). Not that I blame anyone for not having read it, I couldn’t give a loose root.

a year ago today: publicity for the bogan delusion

I am writing on an aeroplane and watching Limitless at the same time, for my sins and guess what, I paid for it. Today I was in Brisbane to do a half-hour interview with Richard Fidler for his Conversation. I am pretty impressed with how I managed to find the ABC studios in Toowong, in a hire car, using nothing more than the gps in my phone and a very rough idea of directions in Brisbane which of the state capitals is probably the one I know least well. I got there with ten minutes to spare and then waited around for ¾ of an hour. But that was ok. I felt a bit frazzled anyway as I hadn’t slept well and the 2 hour flight + the rather fraught drive had made me more messy. Then we went and did the interview – it was originally slated to be live, but then for some reason it was recorded instead (while an interview RF had previously done was put to air) and will be played tomorrow.

I was pretty happy. I think I have the schtick down. Previously I’d done interviews so rarely, I felt I always wanted to be agreeable with things people said even if I didn’t technically believe them – or rather I would try and find common ground. Now, for whatever reason I am happy to contradict interviewers. I imagine once I go back to never being interviewed (which, honestly, is fine) I will return to my former state.

After the interview I had a few hours to fill so I went to Springfield, ostensibly a new town between Brisbane and Ipswich. I was just feeling my way around. I went to Springfield Central, which was just a shopping centre with a wavey street through the middle with cars parked either side of the main street, and I had some crappy coffee and arancini balls at a café there, and then I bought another coffee at a book shop there, and then I was really annoyed by both those coffees, so I went to Springfield Lakes which seems to be the most developed part of the area, very new nonetheless, and drove around a bit, and took some pictures and went to some display homes where a guy was very suspicious particularly after I stepped out and took two pictures from the verandah – he said, ‘You’ve been taking a lot of photographs’, which was a gross exaggeration. Then I started to worry that being so tired I was getting a bit reckless with getting my flight back, considering I had no idea how to get to the airport, so I started driving, and eschewed – foolishly, I now realise – the freeway to the airport because it was a toll road. Then I noticed there was a transponder in the car so that was cool.

So I got to the airport really too early and of course the plane was late to leave but at least I was on it and now I’m watching Limitless.*

I have a couple more radio interviews to do now, but nothing too special (sorry 6RTR and 3CR; I’m sure you’re very special; but you don’t reach millions like the Fidler interview; yes, this is what I’ve become).

* It still arrived ten minutes early, or so the pilot said.

four days ago - publicity for the bogan delusion

How weird that exactly a year following the initial kerfuffle here I am again, revisiting quite a few of the same shows & people and giving my 2c worth on this bogan thing all over. The reason being that the Oxford English Dictionary has decided to include the word 'bogan' in its pages. I cannot believe this is a news story, but Affirm got onto me and people wanted to speak to me, so...

As it transpired, circumstances got a little in the way, because the day this was announced (someone really announced it?!) I was due to go to Canberra, but I was tying up stuff to make my departure in the early evening, so I was able when asked to drop into the ABC at Southbank yet again and have a little chat with Rafael Epstein. I then raced home to get a call from ABC South Australia, which meant me listening for a long time to their other guest - from the Macquarie - talk about bogan moths (pur-lease!) and then when I got on they said the phone line was so bad they had to dump me. This happened again an hour later when I was actually at the airport - this time on my mobile - and I was on the phone to Louise Maher on ABC Canberra; I barely got a sentence out and the phone cut out, which (I know that iPhones have a reputation) never normally happens. It was infuriating.

However, since I was going to Canberra anyway, they teed me up to come into their studio the next day. And I did, and met Louise Maher who was very nice, and we had a quick chat. During this discussion I stepped outside myself and came to fully appreciate that I really needed to get a new schtick, as I was getting a bit uncontained in my commentary (for instance a la Kath Day Knight I got in a simultaneous swipe and kudos to the Australian for a recent editorial on the failings of Fairfax and even though I tied it up with 'and the bogan is a tool in all that...' or words to that effect, let's face it I have said everything there is to say on this subject. Ditto an interview I'd done earlier in the morning with RTR in Perth where the interviewer was very cognisant of everything I'd said in my RTR interview last year... have I moved on? I sort of feel I have, but no-one else has, in this regard. That is an unfair thing for me to think, as the media simply reflects (I hope) society, and it was my job and no-one else's to get the world to move on, and I failed. But still...

a year ago today: publicity for the bogan delusion

Last night (22 July 11) was the launch for the book, and it was really exciting. We had it at Handsome Steve's in Abbotsford Convent (one of my colleagues made the very sensible comment that this was an inappropriately inner-city space, but the interior is very anti-elite, retro and full of fun memorabilia inc a lot of footy stuff). The Suburban and Cokes played, basically New Estate with James Dutton as an extra, doing five songs. 'Flash' by the Coloured Balls, 'No Secrets' by The Angels, 'Cheap Wine' by Cold Chisel, 'Suburban Boy' by Dave Warner's From the Suburbs and 'We Can't Be Beaten' by Rose Tattoo. All went really well, though I am very ambivalent about 'We Can't Be Beaten' because it seems so much to be the inarticulately expressed sadness of an abused child channelling his rage into racist violence.

There were lots of people there and Handsome Steve's being so small made it seem like there were even more than there were, I suppose. We sold a lot of books and I had trouble coming up with valid things to write in them when people asked me to sign them. It was wild overall though and I was really happy with the way it went. I had assumed I would be largely patronised in a jovial sense by many but I wasn't, on the whole. I see a measure (only a measure, I'm not up myself) of success is enough to get people off your back in that sense, or perhaps it wouldn't have happened anyway, don't know.

I still have a few more bits and pieces to do before it's all over - notably, Brisbane next week and another interview (with RTR in Perth of all things) has been booked in as of today for two weeks away. More thrillingly, the ALR has asked me to write something about suburban creativity and that's grouse. I continue to be chuffed. It will be interesting when this all gets 'published' a year from now (in case it's not apparent, I've simply been writing this stuff up as it happens and using the post options function in blogger to publish a year in advance; who knows what mid-2012 will be like, maybe I'll be dead) to see if there were any long-term ramifications. I am keen to do a revised version of the book in the future, and this stuff will be handy for me to look back on then, too.

Just to keep things in perspective, it's not the greatest thing in the world, it's just been really interesting and worthwhile, and I've really enjoyed the experience. That's it.

a year ago today: publicity for the bogan delusion

Got what was I think my first review yesterday from a Saturday Age journalist called Dianne Dempsey. I didn't see it till Saturday evening, and no-one had told me about it in the time leading up till then and no-one has spoken to me about it since. It was not a particularly favourable review, although Dempsey did put forward some positive qualities she found in the work.*

I have probably written about it here previously but I do lead my professional life via the guidance of Paul Fussell and his remarkable essay 'Being Reviewed', one part of which in sum states that if you can't stand being reviewed negatively, don't write books and publish them. I actually feel this is more or less fair enough and I try to abide by its implications, one of which is, oversensitivity to reviews is pathetic. But it was interesting being in a few minds at once - I felt a bit savaged, and also a bit patronised, and also wishing I had a right of reply. But also I could assume the smart reader could see right through this review, which like so much of the guff I have received from the media kind of proves one of my points as outlined in the book (it's a light-hearted bit of fluff from a very middle-class, 'latte coiffing' point of view, which impugns my motives) and so I wondered whether it was ultimately a good or a bad thing. Fussell says, and my limited experience seems to prove, that if you're (or in this case, your product is) important enough to be talked about that's all that really matters.

Still it got up my nose particularly in tandem with the Safran thing which I have been playing over and over in my head since.

I shouldn't be so sensitive, as the book has gone into a 2nd printing, which means I have now to make some corrections. That's a good thing.

* Martin the publisher called me later in the day to commiserate on the review and suggest he was sufficiently irritated by it to 'arc up' with Dempsey/The Age on this but I said I didn't think this was a good idea. I felt a bit like I was being managed, but I am still not sure if my response is a little too emotional.

a year ago today: publicity for the bogan delusion

There is probably a peak then a trough. I certainly started in a trough with my publicity tour and may have peaked earlier this week when I did a very confident, forthright interview with ABC Adelaide drivetime presenter Carole Whitelock. Tonight when I go on John Saffran's show, well who knows, that might be the start of the trough. I felt comfortable with Carole who was a smart, well-spoken intelligent woman who I think was slightly excitedly indignant when I used the word 'dickhead' ('will the South Australian listenership tolerate this???' she may have been wondering.) Saffran is really smart and abrasive, and I have been so lucky up till now with the media someone surely is going to thump me sometime soon. OK well we'll see.

Last night I was at the Trades Hall giving a talk, which I wrote specially and read, all 16 pages of it, to a capacity crowd... whatever I was going to say there I have forgotten I just got a phone call from my publisher Martin to say that they had nearly run out of the first run in the warehouse and they may be going for a reprint. I love being reprinted. I also love being translated into Italian, I suppose that'll only ever happen once.

My future goals for this book are (1) to use it as a springboard to write another, on a related urban theme but from a different direction (2) to do an updated version of the same, perhaps in a year or so incorporating all the hostile and not necessarily all that hostile responses from the gen pub (3) to go on BBC Radio 4's Thinking Allowed and be interviewed by the delightful Laurie Taylor. I have sent him a book and a nice letter and I really hope that last bit happens.

a year ago today: publicity for the bogan delusion

Went up to Cafe Dolce to be interviewed by the editor of Frankie. She got lost on the Tulla and didn't make it. Try again tomorrow.

a year ago today: publicity for the bogan delusion

Publicity proceeds apace, I suppose. I am down to about one interview a day now. Most of them are still for various state capital ABCs but I am looking forward to the Frankie interview tomorrow and the JJJ one next week. I have talked to friends/colleagues who have been in similar situations (as authors, mainly) and our notes do not reveal major discrepancies. For the first time, I started to think this morning about whether there was a serious possibility of following this book up with something else - on a different topic (it would be death to keep ploughing this furrow, it was so of the moment). That said, it won't do to start thinking too much off-topic in the next few weeks. With that in mind I am about to head off and buy Lindsay Tanner's recent book to add to Judith Brett's Quarterly Essay which I purchased last night to try and cobble together something new and interesting to say for Tuesday night's New Internationalist Bookshop talk which reiterates the basic themes of the book but ties in with other work. This is as good for my mind as it is for the life of the 'project'.

When I passed through the atrium of the ABC Southbank for the fourth time on Wednesday I remembered finally that (I am pretty sure that) the first time I saw the frieze panels that now adorn the walls there it was when they were in the 3AR building in, I think, Lonsdale Street Melbourne: I probably visited there, though I cannot for the life of me remember why, in the late 1970s. Maybe a school trip or something? Anyway, they are pretty fine. I find them most intriguing; they represent pre-radio attempts to communicate to, well, the masses I suppose.

a year ago today: publicity for the bogan delusion

The weekend was fairly gratifying with Chris Johnston's article getting a lot of interest. I was contacted by the Sydney Morning Herald on Sunday afternoon to see whether I couldn't sum up the thrust of the book in 800 words. I was trying to take a short break to be fresh on Monday for another radio interview so I didn't do anything until Monday morning, when I rattled off a piece for the web magazine The Conversation and the SMH piece in one hit. I am surprised how positive everyone has been who's contacted me personally. Some seem to feel the thing is clarifying or condoning an opinion they'd already arrived at. Of course, I shouldn't let my guard down because there will be some hostility and I don't want to look flustered by that.

The SMH piece came out this morning - less than 24 hours after I started writing it and I guess less than 12 hours from the final edit - why is that surprising to me, it happens all the time. I wish I could say 'money in the bank too' but they gently informed me that they don't pay people who are promoting a product, which in one sense doesn't surprise me. It's funny to see this in contrast with an email received this morning from one of the authors to all others on this Canberra book 'assuming' we would all be paid for our contributions. I had straight-out assumed there would be no money at all on that front.

The SMH piece is, to my surprise, called 'Bogans, reindeers, they're the same to me' but isn't the plural of reindeer, reindeer? It reads:

I had 13 years as a Sydneysider. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I went west of Auburn. In those days, I probably would have looked a little askance at Summer Hill. In the early nineties, returning from work in Darlinghurst or after classes at the University of Sydney, I might very occasionally stay on the train and go to Rockdale or perhaps even some distant berg like Blacktown, just to see what was there.
I was at the very beginning of escape from my middle-class illusions about the superiority of life at the centre. There was, and still is, a subconscious idea that, if you aren't living in a street with a view of Centrepoint, you are somehow disconnected from the radiant beacon of city culture - the only culture worthy of the name in Australia. I did not hate ''westies'', as they might have been known, but I certainly feared and shunned them in any interaction where they did not recognize (for instance) Newtown as the Sun to their Pluto.
I was a snob, and my only defence is that the snobbery was, and I have to say largely remains, pervasive. I'll always be middle-class, but I am no longer inner-city, having relocated to a suburb 20km from central Melbourne. Now I see it from the other side, and it is not pretty. Inner-city elitists in Australia continue to project views about large groups of otherwise diverse people simply on the basis of their geographic location.
Today it's not the westies but the bogans. The word has murky origins, possibly related to the region and the river in central NSW, then popularized by Kylie Mole and the Comedy Company to become a nationally understood synonym for what were known in Brisbane as bevens, Hobart as chiggers, and Perth as bogs. Whatever: to my mind, it's code for ''working class''. I am reminded of the Kurt Vonnegut novel Breakfast of Champions in which a well-to-do couple have a secret code which allowed them to discuss African-Americans in front of their ''coloured'' maid: they discussed the ''reindeer problem''.
The word is ''just a joke'', some will say defensively, pointing to TV comedies such as Rebel Wilson's Bogan Pride - in which, incidentally, many of the funniest characters weren't bogans but ''nerds''. Some argue bogans are a ''culture'' not a ''class''. But ask them ''what's the difference?'' and the derisive term is laid bare: it's a new way to sustain class resentment, to pigeonhole people and places. They've created this creature that is a lesser human being to express unmentionable interclass hatred.
So poorly defined is the term, it's difficult to criticize its use in everyday life: it's applied to Julian Assange and Julia Gillard, and then to violent criminals. Publicising my book on talkback radio last week, many callers were adamant that bogans existed because they'd seen them: even listening to the multitude of definitions did not seem to deter audiences from the firm belief that their prejudices affirmed their experience.
I'm just happy to see the conversation take place. I want to see Australians stop demonising ''bogans'' who dwell ''out there'' on the suburban fringe, so commonly described in anthropological terms as though there was some kind of sub-species prone to anti-social behaviour and hitherto undiscovered. I would also be quite happy if those who describe themselves as ''bogan'' recognized that to self-identify as such is to demonstrate too much awareness to be truly a ''bogan'' in most people's minds. I would also be very happy to see an end to the assumptions that comedy and film - for instance, Angry Boys and Snowtown - are truthful representations, rather than extreme amplifications of the suburbs.
Is all of this ranting against the word ''bogan'' a plea for political correctness? Possibly, but not the way 'PC' language is usually discussed. It's a plea for precision: it's about calling the disenfranchised, or marginalized, what they are - rather than a reindeer. Besides, if Assange, Gillard, Shane Warne and Eric Bana (yes, the charges have been laid, not just because he once played one on TV) are all bogans, who isn't a bogan? Is it praise, blame or demonization? Some clarity in the argument might grease the wheels of the discussion, and who knows, we might just get somewhere.

Later: This was apparently on all fairfax sites so it has been receiving a big bunch of comments from irritated people. Martin Hughes called me to urge me not to read them and I won't. As I said to him, I don't care greatly one way or the other. I have noticed on facebook that there are a lot of people - people I know, and academics no less - who feel happy to comment blithely on things missing from the article (i.e. discussion of 'bevens' and something along the lines of 'apparently Tasmania has a word for them too') which are not actually missing from the article. That is just weird. I couldn't help but post a comment saying that I certainly did not expect people to be au fait with the book, but to then post on facebook about what's missing from a short article, which actually isn't missing from the same short article, seems to me pretty preposterous. I didn't use the word 'preposterous'. It is easy to get shitty with people but I suppose you also have to be happy they're motivated to get involved in the general mix.

bogan delusion

The previous post has a whole lot of comments that might look a bit obscure without acknowledgement that my book The Bogan Delusion with pictures by Mia Schoen is out now in bookshops. Clever people have been tracking me online to this blog. I am recording a diary of my responses to the publicity whirlwind but not ready to publish just yet in case it queers the pitch! You might hear me on the radio or something in the next few weeks, enjoy, or not...!

One podcast of recent radio appearance here (Life Matters) another here (Jon Faine).