Jim Williams’
letters, written
over
a period of eighteen months to friends, acquaintances and antagonists,
reveal his natural talent as a storyteller. Setting out to detail the
day-to-day life amongst the humal flotsam and jetsam of Byron Bay he
discovers unexpected tales: the mysterious influence of the Lighthouse,
Pedro’s Gaucho history, the uncanny Beach Burial, the
sinister Carers
or the powerful Dice-thrower. He intrigues, jokes with, disquiets and
enchants his addressees.
It is almost unprecedented that a writer’s
letters are
published
within
his own lifetime. Jim Williams’ letters could not await his
death.
Their sheer humour and their pleasures are too compelling.
,
No. 150, Autumn 1998
Australian critics are
often charmed
by the combination of modest scope and sumptuous detail. The details in
themselves need not be trivial. They can be about migraines, mountains,
melons or misalliances. But they must be sharp, sensuous and original,
and their larger context must not be ambitious. Broken or wistful love
affairs, dull jobs, lifeless marriages, ‘small’
people trapped
uncomprehending in large wars or the results of large wars seem
permissible. Characters or authorial personae who think, strain or
question too far beyond the initial philosophy of their writer or
reader seem open to literary suspicion.
The reverence for detail is reinforced by the natural tendency of
people in shock, mistrust or mourning to partialize their sense-data
into manageable portions, to notice only bits and pieces of things and
to notice those with an increased brilliance of perception. To question
such processes can seem almost sacrilegious at times. When I received
this miscellany of recent Australian writing, I expected the books to
rate very high in wonderful sense-data and rather lower in surprising
concepts or situations. The word ‘high’ is
applicable, too, because
fixation on bright details is also characteristic of most forms of
intoxication (as it is of childhood and prison).
One suspects, too, of course, that (despite the undoubted compensations
- as in Borges - of enforced metaphor) there is an element of sexual
evasiveness in some of the splendid evocation. Even in Patrick
White’s
novels, the powerful settings might have dwindled in perspective to
personality had his central characters not been the rather
one-dimensional Mrs Roxburgh and Mrs Godbold but someone like the
rather more voluptuous and much more multi-dimensional Mr Munday.
Many of these current books, too, have powerful Australian settings.
The oddest is
Letters
from Byron,
in which the seductive locale of Byron Bay serves as a ready made
backdrop for what are essentially tight, tense epistolary fictions in
which the reader is made to understand more about the nature of the
events - usually scientifically impossible and occasionally simply
illegal - than the narrator ostensibly does, As short stories, the ones
illustrating straightforward indignation at
‘idealistic’ social
experiments I think work best, but the self-consciousness of the
autobiographical device as such makes the narratives seem much more
contrived than they really are. This author deserves to relax into the
luxury of third person characterization and the full freedom of fiction.
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New Writing
Gerard
Ross
Imago, Vol.
10, No. 1, Autumn
1998
Whether the letters in Jim Williams’s
Letters
from Byron were ever genuine letters (does anyone actually
write
to a friend Byron, the eternally green and bountiful, with its rich
pastures and tropical orchards...?) or whether the presentation itself
is a fiction is not especially relevant here. For each letter is, in
fact, a bizarre or macabre apocrypha wrapped around a warmly observed
vignette of Byron Bay life - sort of an Edgar Allen Poe in sandals.
Surprisingly - and, I must add, fortunately - most of the letters
express bemusement and gentle mockery of the New Age orthodoxies of the
area.
It’s all quite pleasant and distracting, but is it a book
worth
publishing? There are a lot of ideas running through it; however, the
choice to run these stories as letters restricts the whole to a
meandering collection of half-formed starting points. There is some
good stuff in here and the letters probably would be fun to find in
your post box, but... Black Pepper would have done well to have
encouraged the author to develop these notes into something more
substantial.
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Tom Sharpe in
Byron Bay?
Letters
from Byron
Paddy Ryan
Social Alternatives,
Vol. 17,
No. 1, January 1998
In
Letters
From Byron, Jim Williams exhibits a sketch of one of
Australia’s
favourite destinations for those who wish to pursue an alternative
lifestyle. This sketch is in the form of a series of short
‘letters’
written to friends, most of whom seem to be based in
Melbourne’s café
culture. The stories are short and simple enough to read over a
café
latté in a chic espresso bar and give a sense of the pace of
life in
Byron Bay and some of its more colourful fringe dwellers and local
entrepreneurs. The tales he spins are sometimes reminiscent of the
bizarre short stories by Peter Carey.
The author appears ambivalent towards some of his more alternative
characters. Often, his judgement of these characters becomes
antagonistic, similar to the cynicism seen in P.J.
O’Rourke’s stories.
However, there is a sense that the author is ultimately sympathetic to
his characters and their causes. Indeed, he may even be one of them
himself.
During those moments in
Letters
From
Byron when the author is at ease, the reader is reminded
of
another comic writer. As he relaxes into his role as story teller, the
riotous antics and vaudevillian frivolity of the likes of Tom Sharpe
can be seen in his character development. In these instances, his
potential as a teller of tales shines through and the reader is left
wishing for more.
However, throughout the book there is often a sense of self
consciousness. Sometimes parts of some of the stories seem far too
wordy. There are also occasions where the stories become bogged down in
the technicalities of the subject. For example, in one story the author
concentrates on the use of the internet and computers as a focus for
his ideas. Rather than exploring the story’s central
characters in more
detail, he labours over lengthy explanations of his understanding of
how the technology works. For a while it seems as though one is reading
a beginner’s text on the theory of computing and the
internet. It is
only after this brief lesson that he rejoins the essence of his story.
In this case, one with lots of imagination on and potential.
At times, it is not until near the end of a story that the pace picks
up and then within a dozen paragraphs the colourful ideas quickly form
but end prematurely. Just as a story becomes interesting and gathers
momentum, usually in a bizarre kind of way, the reader is left up in
the air only to imagine what might have developed.
A particular favourite was ‘The German Couple’
story in which the
author describes an out of body experience. Whilst visiting a
mysterious ‘new age’ couple’s house
somewhere in the Byron region, the
author tells of a mystical and disturbing experience while in a trance.
The story begins with a cynical view of all things not scientifically
based. However, by the end of the story, the author is bedazzled by his
experiences and can only wonder at what might be.
Overall, a light and easy read. A good companion while biding your time
over an aromatic cappuccino in your favourite café.
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Shorts
Letters
From Byron
Andrea Moss
Australian Book Review,
No. 197, December 1997/January 1998
‘There always seems to be a fine line between the real and
the unreal,
especially here on the North Coast’. So writes Jim Williams
to a friend
‘down South’.
This slim volume of letters is written from colourful Byron Bay and
surrounds, where he leads a somewhat nomadic existence among eclectic
Byronites. The letters form a window into Williams’ life, the
oddities
of Byron Bay, and the bizarre experiences that Williams finds himself
having: which may or may not be figments of his imagination.
The mysterious yiralinga, Artificial Intelligence experiments, animal
sacrifices, out-of-body experiences, toughs in search of valuable
Argentinian manuscripts, ethereal people who disappear without a
trace... all are treated with Williams’ entertaining
description and
detail.
Each letter details the strange twists and turns of the episodes and
escapades, merging a spectrum of topics with storytelling, myth-making,
spirituality, local history, science and even social commentary. And
each letter ends with a decidedly fanciful twist and a lurking sinister
tone. We are left to come to our own conclusion about what portion of
each story exists solely in the letter-writers imagination: if any.
While light-hearted and humorous, there is a tone of underlying
cynicism about the Byron Bay ethos, and its ultimate superficiality and
emptiness. The letters become more enjoyable and engaging as the book
progresses, and have a cumulative effect of drawing the reader into
Williams’ curious world: ‘Even I wonder what sort
of world I live in up
here’.
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As you might expect from
a
correspondent in Byron Bay, these letters are not so much conventional
despatches so much as tall stories that begin with everyday events and
veer off into the gothic or surreal. Through playful irony, Williams
provides a beguiling commentary on Byron’s weird and
wonderful cultural
mix. The result is a series of enigmatic, yet strangely satisfying,
tales: a biologist mysteriously disappears in the Big Scrub; the Grim
Reaper visits a Byron cafe in the guise of a man in a black suit
carrying a pair of dice. While these stories resonate with all sorts of
subtle allusions to ‘old masters’, they never lose
their informal,
conversational quality.
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Paperbacks:
Letters From Byron
Jo Martin
Star Weekend
There’s something deliciously forbidden about reading other
people’s letters. From the comfort of anonymity, one can
quietly
disrobe the shrouded secrets of others. That’s why
Letters From Byron,
by Jim Williams is such a dainty morsel - especially for
locals
who may wonder as to the identity of some of the characters.
‘It is a collection of letters written to genuine people over
a
period of about 18 months,’ Mr Williams said. ‘It
has only
cost me one friend so far.’
....Jim Williams is best known for his poems, particularly haiku, that
have appeared in magazines and journals everywhere. Mr Williams now
lives at Bullarto, Victoria. But his heart still is in Byron Bay.
‘I lived in this area for about five years,’ he
said.
‘Mainly in Suffolk Park, Ocean Shores and Lismore. I see this
whole area as The Golden Triangle. People come here to live out their
dream and that is reflected in all the companies you see around
here.’
Letters From Byron
is a
close-up of a handful of these dreams set amid the day-to-day goings on
around town. The joy of the letters is that it’s hard to tell
where reality begins and ends. ‘I have always enjoyed writing
letters but sometimes I get the feeling that they have managed to go
far beyond my actual experiences. They began as letters but became
stories,’ Mr Williams said. There’s the one about
the
uncanny beach burials, the sinister carers, and the mysterious
influence of the lighthouse. Mr Williams weaves intriguing, funny,
sometimes unsettling but delightful tales of the unexpected.
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