A Fraction of the Whole - Steve Toltz

If jealousy is a curse, then consider me screwed, because I’m jealous as all hell of this book. Besides the fact that it’s funny, insightful, clever, and with enough navel gazing to keep Socrates content for hours, it’s a ripping good yarn. And I don’t mind a bit that I’m using rubbishy Australian colloquialisms to describe it, because it’s wonderfully written by an Aussie bloke who even managed to parody Australia’s long-held deification of people with above average hand-eye coordination.

A few choice moments:

“…I can’t accurately describe it because my visions were simultaneous, and language, being successive, means I have to record it that way.” – p.33

Where were you, Toltz, when I was struggling through Eco and Heidegger and Hegel? And when you look at it like this, grammar is language’s Lonely Planet which makes sure you know where you’re going, and what to expect before you accidentally find yourself walking through Kings Cross in your bikini.
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“…conversations disintegrate into competing monologues.” – p.45

A sentence which perfectly describes what goes on with nauseating regularity in the dining area of youth hostels, or an expat bar, or question time at Parliament House.
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“I think that’s the real loss of innocence: the first time you glimpse the boundaries that will limit your own potential.” – p. 331

That may be for some, but what happens to those people who start off knowing only boundaries, and eventually see the world open up at their feet like a really stubborn oyster which you’ve cut your fingers badly on but stuck with through grim perseverance, (or stupidity) to find a big juicy round shiny pearl inside with your name on it. Or better still, 15,000 pearls, all with their own varied path to a version of paradise for your choosing? It’s rather difficult for your average six year old to imagine being the leading expert on DNA for example, isn’t it?
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“…believe it or not, financial hardship is not actually the one official reality.” –p.451

While this seems alarmingly obvious to me now, I only recently started telling anyone who listened that I thought the comment that celebrities are cut off from reality is ridiculous, because surely their lives are very bloody real to them. This statement also embodies the core of Australia’s tall poppy syndrome, as if the mere fact that because a celebrity’s face is more familiar to us than our own grandparents is the result of some deeply held character flaw they have rather than evidence of our own screwed up grasp of what is important.

And saying “it’s easy for you, you’re rich and famous” is just stupid. If I had to choose between being on the cover of Vogue magazine once a month for the next five years (airbrushed to look like a complementary mix between Scarlett Johansson and Cate Blanchett), or being guaranteed that no photo of me stumbling out of a pub at 2am will ever, ever be published, I know which one I’d choose. No, it wouldn’t be the Scarlate option.

Sorry, that was a vague and meandering and meaningless post. Just be glad I only chose a fraction of the whole to comment on (geddit?), because at 711 pages long, we could still be sitting here.