Cover painting
Portrait of Stephen
West by John Baird
ISBN 1876044039
Published 1995
149 pgs
$19.95
Meditations
of a Flawed Groom
book
sample
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part one:
the descent
10 sections
part two:
manoeuvring among the embryo angels
5 sections
part three:
the blue guitar
5 sections
part four:
the wandering protagonist
4 sections
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Reviews
Comments by Alex Skovron
October 2009
I enjoyed
Meditations of a Flawed Groom immensely.
I found it rich, colourful, dense, intense – a novel of ideas, an
exploration of consciousness, with some splendid poetic imagery and
exhilarating prose. At the same time it is an act of storytelling, and
a relay of stories within stories – as in (for instance) the
accounts of John’s adventures, or the Socratic dialogue with the
dero. I liked your unabashed use of richly-charged, sometimes unusual
vocabulary – though I felt that at times, like your hero,
you are ‘in the habit of super-enciphering your
sentences’....
In sum, I was impressed by your talent, and wish you success.
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Books
and Writing
Geoff Page
Radio National, Broadcast February 1997
Clearly autobiographical in many, but not all, ways,
Meditations of a Flawed Groom
is a
daunting book to review. As with most autobiographies one feels that in
some sense one is reviewing the author rather than the work. In the
book’s blurb we learn that Vivian Hopkirk is a nephew of the
painter
Brett Whiteley and it is not a total surprise to see that the late
painter is hagiographically offered as a character in the novel. We
also learn that Hopkirk is a poet and it is no surprise to see that the
book’s narrator, Stephen West, is also a poet. The publishers
also
inform us that the book’s basic situation, a short stay in
jail,has
also been an experience of the writer. Given this extra-literary
information we may proceed to the novel itself.
The narrator, Stephen West, in the course of a three day stay in jail,
converses with, or listens to, a succession of cellmates: a young
Aboriginal man called Morris, a philosophical derelict who is heavily
into metaphysics and a painter who is an extraordinary raconteur.
Occasionally he hears disconcerting activities in the corridor outside
and is from time to time abruptly visited by the warders. In between
there are various flashbacks, as for instance, to the
narrator/author’s
childhood and his parents’ marriage break-up, in which Brett
Whiteley
himself seems to have played a benignly facilitating role.
The style of the book ranges wildly from large slabs of indigestible
philosophical dialogue (such as were almost never spoken, even by
Socrates and his students) to humorous and highly engaging tall tales
from the painter’s travels in Europe. Significantly the later
are not
from the mouth of Stephen West who seems to have had a terminal
overdose of polysyllables and will never use two simple words when one
arcane one will do. West himself explains this preference, though not
necessarily convincingly. ‘As a rule’, he says,
‘one must be careful
not to speak too mysteriously in the English tongue, particularly in
the Antipodes, for fear of a smack in the mouth.’ One excerpt
from the
‘dero’ sequence illustrates what he means.
‘In other words,’ says
Stephen West, ‘God and the Cosmos are synonomous. God
evolves. This
life ensures that we begin at the darkest beginning and find our way in
the gradual realization that we are responsible, not only to our
selves, but the fortunes of all existence: to God.’
‘Hmrnmm,’ said the dero. ‘You certainly
are a crack metaphysician. I
admit that I like your style. Of course, you know what Albert Camus
would say.’ Hopkirk, via Stephen West, may indeed by a
‘crack
metaphysician’ but whether he’s a true novelist is
less certain.
The problem with most of this book is that it really asks too much of
its reader, especially in the opening sections. The narrator often
seems pompously grandiloquent and the texture of both narration and
dialogue is more or less impenetrable. One needs a kind of protestant
self-discipline to persist and I was encouraged only by skipping ahead
and noting that some of the later sections were rather clearer and so
forced myself to go back and work my way slowly forwards again into
those more open pastures.
Among the more congenial of such expanses is Hopkirk’s
account of his
childhood in New Zealand and the breakup of his parents’
marriage. The
narrator says of his mother at this point that ‘she was proud
and yet
somehow abandoned by the extraordinary fame of her brother, who was,
until he perished alone in a motel on the South Coast of New South
Wales, one of the most remarkable men ever to pace the
earth.’ Although
this was not the universal view of the critics who reviewed
Whiteley’s
1995 retrospective it is clear evidence of the artist’s
heroic status
in his nephew’s eyes, a view further confirmed by the
commanding
assistance given by Whiteley to his sister in giving her husband the
bad news. ‘Brett was straight from the hip: ‘Man,
we’re here to break
your heart, and you have to accept it. It’s your fate,
you’ll have to
be real big. Fran is leaving you for this man, they are in love, and
they are going to live in London. That’s the story,
that’s the way it
is and I have come a long way to tell you this.’
Another of these more open pastures are the tales told by his third
cellmate, John, a painter, who is in overnight on a charge of
‘asleep
and disorderly’ following a drunken night out with a woman
that went
badly wrong somewhere. The painter leaves Stephen West (and the reader)
highly entertained (and mercifully speechless) with several tales of
wild times in Europe with other Rimbaud-style artists and their women.
The scene shifts considerably - France, Greece, Italy and Ireland - but
perhaps most memorably to a plane trip in New Guinea with a drugged
wild boar who wakes up in mid flight.
The novel ends with Stephen’s ejection from jail on the third
day and
his return to the inner city boarding house described earlier in the
novel and tenanted by people of various sexual inclinations and no less
strange than West himself. What the average reader will have made of
Hopkirk’s novel by this stage is hard to say. Some, like the
narrator,
may be groggily relieved at their new freedom. Some will consider, with
some justice, that they have wasted their time. Still others will feel
they have been in the claustrophic presence of a powerful but anarchic
talent which has not yet quite found its true metier. In any event,
Vivian Hopkirk and his
Meditations
of a Flawed Groom will not slip blandly from their memory.
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shorts
Sydney Smith
Australian Book Review,
No. 188, February/March 1997
These are the ruminations of one Stephen West during a three-day stint
in prison. Groping through the murk produced by the author’s
over-use
of the thesaurus and under-use of the dictionary, I encounter
Stephen’s
co-inmate, an Aborigine from Redfern,who recounts his history of drug
abuse and crime, which sets Stephen off on a line of reflection.
A people for whom we
have inherited
the responsibility of those who assumed to change the world, into which
we have invaginated ourselves...
A page of this exhausted me. And it went on: ‘What a
centrifuge of
terrors and absence of communication or belief in the ductile holiness
of a child.’ Good grief.
Look - this is a bad book. The English is usually deranged; the
philosophical bits are trite or poorly reasoned; poetry and humour
don’t exist in it. The recurrence of certain words:
‘vanity’ and
‘invaginated’ are two examples, gave me a picture
of Stephen and his
creator which I’m sure the latter did not intend. So that,
when Stephen
announced, ‘Estrange the child, and you estrange it from
itself,’ I
knew with certainty he had no idea the truth he spoke.
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Best books of ’
96
Rodney Hall, novelist
The Sydney Morning Herald,
30
November 1996
My year’s reading has been dominated by Roger
Milliss’s magnificent
history of the Australia Day massacre of 1838,
Waterloo Creek.
Pauline Hanson
ought not to be allowed back into Parliament until she has read all 750
pages. Milliss’s great achievement is to marshal a wealth of
facts into
a story of breathtaking drive and moral urgency. A thoughtful Christmas
present for John Howard, too.
I have just begun
The
Glade within
the Grove by David Foster. It is already proving to be
Foster’s
characteristic mix of comedy and erudition - massive, quirky and very
good. I am yet again astounded that he is not more celebrated. Too much
adulation is squandered on lightweight novels masquerading as literary
works.
While on the subject of mis-judgments, how depressing it is when a
gifted new writer emerges to almost complete silence. That’s
what
happened this year to Vivian Hopkirk’s
Meditations of a Flawed Groom.
It
deserves to be celebrated, not ignored.
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Lisa Catherine
Ehrich
Social Alternatives,
Vol. 15,
No. 4, October 1996
Meditations of a Flawed
Groom
is a very complex novel. Essentially it is the story of a man who
spends three days in a Sydney jail as a result of some unpaid fines and
disorderly conduct. Stephen West, the main character, is a poet and
philosopher. Among other things, he expounds on various topics such as
religion, art, history, society, and metaphysics. The reader is very
quickly introduced to his unbridled imagination and his philosophical
quest for understanding the nature of humanity.
The book is divided into four main sections, and each section
introduces a new inmate who spends a short stint in West’s
cell. Each
of these characters is colourful - from Morris, the Aboriginal junkie
and thief, to the brilliant-minded derelict who is able to hold his own
with West when it comes to intellectualising. However, the reader is
prevented from developing any empathy for the inmates, because the
author’s convoluted language and cryptic statements act as a
barrier.
The final part of the book marks a dramatic and unexpected shift in
pace, language and style. Whereas the first three chapters rely heavily
on overused metaphors and artificially flowery language, the final part
of the book is refreshing in both its content and language. It is as
though the author decided to give up on trying to impress the reader
and just got on with the job of writing. The change in style is so
great, it is a little disorienting.
It is in chapter four that Hopkirk becomes the writer of advanced
ability that he only pretends to be in the earlier part of the book. He
shines through with affection as he narrates his childhood with a keen
and cynical eye. His recollections are interrupted by the arrival of
another inmate who shares one night in his cell. The two men develop an
instant rapport and exchange humorous stories. The stories are
delightfully refreshing and light-hearted. The book concludes with
West’s release from prison.
In fairness to Vivian Hopkirk he has set himself an almost impossible
literary task. To write seriously a philosophical and poetic novel that
can maintain a gripping narrative throughout is something that only the
likes of Genet or Sartre could accomplish. However disjointed the first
part of the book, the second part improves dramatically.
The author’s talent is defined without question at the end of
the book.
Hopkirk is an important writer though one cannot help but feel cheated
at having to wade through so much obscurity at the beginning of the
novel to get the rewards at the end.
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Musecrits
Robert Umphelby
Muse, No.
156, October 1996
Meditations of a Flawed
Groom
jumps upon the reader’s senses with the first word and never
takes
breath. With an almost euphoric mien Vivian Hopkirk’s first
novel
describes his deliberately induced stay in a Sydney jail and its impact
on his philosophical and poetic mind. His vision draws constantly on
the likes of Camus, Kundera and Solzhenitsyn for quotation and guidance
and combines with his own words to create a novel of very heavy
reading. The language of Hopkirk’s novel is dense with
description and
creates such a vivid dialogue of a mind agonising in jail, it is hard
to believe it is not deaf with self-possession. This is not to say
Vivian Hopkirk does not wield a mighty style of prose, just that at
times it takes on a mind of its own that it is so strong it loses
credibility in descriptive overload.
Meditations
of a Flawed Groom’s dense prose is hard to read
and is really
only for those who are patient and can enjoy the complexities of a
philosopher’s mind in the poetic.
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