By Mark Butler*

OUR town’s book nook (motto: “Leave a book, take a book, or both. No batteries required.”) is snugly tucked away in the vestibule of the community hall, and was set up by my wife Mary and me not long after we had moved here in 2016. We maintain and curate it, and it has been an unexpected success, indicating that perhaps any pronouncements on the death of the book may be premature.

Many grey nomads pass through town on their way to Dubbo or further west, and word has gone out about our nook, for there is regular turnover, in and out, such that I keep a separate stash in my garage to top up the shelves. We like to keep them full, on the assumption that this would be more attractive to a casual visitor than the derelict look of half-empty shelves. 

We also weed out books when we have too many of the one author or genre (looking at you, James Patterson and Danielle Steele, whoever you are), as well as self-help books, recipe books, religious tracts or anything by Bryce Courtenay (surely the world has suffered enough). Branded children’s books, such as Disney or other movie tie-ins or Marvel rehashes, go straight in the bin. But you will find Joyce Carol Oates as well as Monica MacInerney and Meave Binchy or Michael Connelly and John le Carre, and classics by Jane Austen, Emily Bronte, Charles Dickens, JD Salinger and Spike Milligan. 

Apart from a spate of novels a few months ago by Thea Astley, that surgical but now unfairly forgotten examiner of everything Queensland, and the odd Tim Winton, not many quality Australian novels come through, although I did snaffle for myself two first-edition Patrick White hardcovers. I also picked up Gavin Souter’s A Peculiar People: Australians in Paraguay, about William Lane’s doomed ideal colony, Cosme, which he and a band of fellow socialists, one of whom was poet Mary Gilmore, established at the turn of the century.

Among the Astley novels was her first, and a Miles Franklin winner, Girl with a Monkey, and re-reading it I was yet again taken by her sharp wit and luscious language. No wonder Patrick White took her up as a friend and regular dinner guest. Until he didn’t. I knew her through a fellow poet who had been taught by her at high school. She was one of the founding members of the English faculty at the brand-new Macquarie University in Sydney, where she was my lecturer and tutor. But because I also knew her ex-student, our relationship was less formal than that, and she used to regale me with stories of her dinners at Patrick’s place. But just one of his bon mots recalled by her has stuck with me. Virginia Woolf’s novels, he had said, were like a discreet cough into a lace handkerchief. 

I forget what crime Astley committed, but it was something she said that he took exception to, and she was booted forever from his table. This didn’t faze her at all, as she lit another of the many cigarettes she would devour in a tutorial and launched into more scandalous stories.

Astley would have enjoyed another book that landed in the nook, Far Too Noisy, My Dear Mozart, A Collection of Historical Insults. The title is deceptive, because many of the quotes aren’t insults as such, more like acerbic critiques, as in Mark Twain’s assessment of Wagner’s output: “Wagner’s music is better than it sounds.” And Charles Baudelaire’s quote, “What is art? Prostitution”, is hardly an insult, some might say it’s a bald statement of the truth. And nor is Queen Alexandra’s comment shortly after the death of her husband and notorious rake Edward VII, that “Now at least I know where he is”, an insult, entertaining though it is. 

Former British PM Benjamin Disraeli knew how to deliver an insult, though. Consider this about one of his predecessors, Robert Peel: “His smile is like the silver fittings on a coffin.” And this killer, which could be applied to any number of contemporary politicians (calling Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton): “If a traveller were informed that such a man was the leader of the House of Commons, he might begin to comprehend how the Egyptians worshipped an insect.” He was referring to another of his predecessors, Lord John Russell.

Let a woman have the last word: Margaret Asquith on Winston Churchill: “He would kill his own mother just so he could use her skin to make a drum to beat his own praises.” Ouch.

I hope our little nook gives others that serendipitous experience of coming across a book they hadn’t planned to read, but because it is there for free, they do. The idea behind free libraries such as ours is simple, and global: to provide a book for everyone who wants one. And it works, a kind of perpetual machine that is free and easy to operate. 

Anarchy in action, you could say. A spontaneous act of sharing. It’s continuing, unassuming success suggests there is another society out there, one that is rarely reflected by our bubble media.

But, hey, what else is new?

This is the fifth of an occasional series of articles by contributing authors under the general title of FARRAGO.
The first FARRAGO, also written by Mark Butler, was a tribute to the Australian poet John Tranter, and can be read here.
Mark also contributed the several other FARRAGO iterations: Spoiled Sports, a caustic look at the cancer that is sports betting; Smoke Signals, a look at the perils – and pleasures – of tobacco; and Death of a nobody, a sad tale of the passing of Warren, a “benign, permanently shitfaced presence” in his small town.
Mark’s most recent FARRAGO was The bloke downstairs, a survival tale of life in a toxic media organisation.