photo credit: James Jordan

Hi all and

welcome to yet another edition of Untangling the Web. In this post I’ll be discussing the mammoth Google Books deal, followed by a rant encompassing many people’s opinion on literary prizes, and finally some useful links for the literature-inclined. As always, thanks go to my main sources of links: @AustLiterature, @Meanjin, and @OverlandJournal.

News:

A Short History of Google Books (and if they have their way, Nearly Everything):

Google. You love them, I love them. And even if you don’t love them, you’ve almost certainly used their home page quite a few times in your life, and you know about their rapidly expanding range of web-based products. Right now you can sign up and get access to Google Documents, Google Reader, Google Scholar, Google Photo (Picasa), Google Video (YouTube), Google Maps, and Google Books. Today it’s that last item on the list that I’d like to talk about. Google Books is a huge project undertaken by Google to provide an online, searchable database of books. That sounds good, right? A massive digital archive of books that may include those that are out of print and therefore unobtainable, being made available for free online for all to access. As always, there a little more to it than that.

When it comes to scanning things and putting them online, it’s not long before the issue of copyright creeps in. Google has begun scanning millions–literally millions, they’re up to around 12 million at time of writing–of books through their Library and Partner projects. While they do have safeguards in place that result in only public-domain works being fully searchable, and measures in place to prevent the copying of text and downloading of copyrighted material, publishers argue that the act of scanning, saving, and storing copyrighted works in their databases is a violation of copyright. This argument was embodied in a lawsuit against Google undertaken by the Author’s Guild of America and the Association of American Publishers. While this lawsuit did not go to court, Google did enter into a settlement agreement with the parties involved. This settlement agreement has gone back and forth between parties and the latest news on it is that the U.S. Justice Department has stated that the settlement is inadequate due to a failure to address copyright and antitrust concerns.

And let’s not pull any punches here, the concerns are very real. While Google has a ‘don’t be evil’ policy, they still have to justify their actions as not being so. At the moment the spin is the preservation of the written word. After all, they say, the great library of Alexendria burned down three times. And the preservation of the ancient tomes that are in libraries is a great use for the scanning technology. But we’re not just talking about libraries here. Google wants to scan and store every book. And it’s the way they are going about this that is drawing criticism. If you have ever installed software that comes bundled with other software (usually called ‘crapware’–things like internet toolbars and the like) you’ll have noticed that the box that says ‘Yes! Count me in! Install this ridiculously useless toolbar on my computer!’ comes pre-ticked. This is known as an ‘opt out’ way of doing things, and it’s exactly how Google is treating the Google Books deal. Authors are assumed to be complying with the Google Books settlement unless they go to a website and opt out. And approximately 6,500 authors did exactly that, lead by such names as Quentin Blake, Zadie Smith and Ursula Le Guinn. Reasons cited for doing so include not having anything to lose by opting out, but potentially everything to lose by remaining in and the effect the deal might have on the copyright of their books. It’s a very tricky situation, as the ownership of copyrighted works would essentially be transferred to Google.

Under the terms of the agreement, ‘…[authors] will receive $60 per full book, or $5 to $15 for partial works. In return, Google will be able to index the books and display snippets in search results, as well as up to 20% of each book in preview mode. Google will also be able to show ads on these pages and make available for sale digital versions of each book. Authors and copyright holders will receive 63 percent of all advertising and e-commerce revenues associated with their works.’ (summation from here). Essentially, Google is gaining permission to put together a huge digital library from which they can make ad revenue and sell e-books. This is big business, make no mistake.

So what happens now? If the settlement goes through and Google gains permission to place public domain works in full, and copyrighted works partially on the net, we’ll all gain access to a huge and informative resource. But what about the rights of copyright holders? And what happens to fair use? Google has decided it wants to do something and has set about doing it, and it seems that while the litigation world has scrambled to try and place terms and boundaries on what the Google machine can and can’t do, it has done so in a much more patchwork fashion than might have occured if Google had asked questions first and acted later.

Further reading:
Google has aggregated all the positive feedback on their project at this page.
The details of the settlement agreement, if you’re a lawyer and into that kind of thing.

Rant:

Arbiters and the arbitrary: the literary prize

Ever since I was just a wee lad in primary school (well, relatively wee–I’ve been one of those beanpole kids right from the word go) I’ve loved getting awards. Who doesn’t? Whether they were the gaudy plastic statues with a gold metallic finish that our teeball teams handed out at the end of the season, or the coveted book prizes for dux of each year, the feeling of recognition and the thrill of being The One for that fifteen minutes has always excited me. Of course, the kinds of awards you get in primary school are pretty easy to justify: you got the most answers right on your addition and subtraction test, or you hit the most home runs around the park. But what happens when the conditions for awards are subjective? Enter the world of awards for creativity and, more specifically, the elusive literary prize.

The issue of the legitimacy of literary prizes has been around for as long as there have been folks to disagree with the chosen winners. By saying that I’m not trying to be antagonistic towards those who critique the receivers of prizes. After all, if there were no dissenters there would be no issue to talk about and everybody would be unanimous in their praise for the winner of each and every literary prize. But it is a rare, if not extinct, piece of writing that unites all its readers, and this is exactly what makes creative arts so exciting and interesting and downright confusing. Lately, partly as a result of the cancellation of the Australia-Asia Literary Award, and partly because the issue is practically seasonal in its discussion, there has been a lot of talk about what attitude, if any, Australian writers should take to literary prizes. Where do they fit in? How can we guarantee that our best writing is winning them? What are they really rewarding?

Over at his blog, Samuel Cooney found himself pondering a contentious question, ‘Why do we insist on placing quantitative value — first, second, third — on creative works that so obviously work in a qualitative fashion?’ It’s a damn good one, too. See, along with my fondness for writing I have a fondness for mathematics and all the ‘hard’ sciences that are derived from it. Throughout my university career I have been graded according to whether I have written an answer that is right or wrong. There’s nothing more to it than that. I cannot fathom how you can assign a grade to a piece of art. What possible scale exists to compare it to? In a learning environment, a good teacher might compare a student’s attempts and grade according to growth, but I doubt there are many good teachers out there. And once you take the writer and the grade/prize out of a learning environment and remove familiarity between author and piece and judge, there is no yardstick beyond that of personal taste. This may seem like a cynical view, but you will find it backed up time and time again if you have a wander through the 40 years of judging piece that the Booker prize ran on its 40th anniversary. Once you see how arbitrary and subject to personalities one of the supposedly most prestigious writing awards is, it almost makes you want to give up and never submit a piece of writing again. For if it can happen to those giants of judging, it can certainly happen to even the most eager of fledgling editors. Geordie Williamson sums up an excellent article (and you really must read the entire thing because it’s brilliant) with the provocative statement that:

‘Prize culture, like aristocratic patronage, makes a lottery of literature, in which one, sometimes unworthy, winner obliterates the hopes of a thousand others.’

If you were to peruse a short list, or even a long list, of books for a national prize, this sense of lottery is obvious. How can you even begin to judge Tim Winton against Richard Flanagan against Murray Bail against Louis Nowra against Christos Tsiolkas? They each write beautifully in their own individual style, as far removed from each other as they are from you and I. (For yet more insight into the judging procedure, listen to the review with Geordie on ABC’s The Book Show.)

But that isn’t the main thrust of Sam’s blog post. Of more concern is the example that such lauded books have on the community they are awarded in. Multiple Miles Franklin Award winner Tim Winton has often been referred to as possessing the voice of Australia. Similarly, Christos Tsiolkas’ latest novel The Slap garnered many awards and had critics nodding over how accurately it portrayed Australian life. But whose Australia are we talking about here? By holding these books up as unique examples of what we perceive as being ‘Australian’ are we not precluding any other interpretation? If I wrote a story located in coastal Australia that featured no daredevil surfers, or a suburban tale of family relationships that contained no power-hungry alpha males, would that now be considered innaccurate? By holding a book as being worthy of merit, we are enforcing the ideal present in that book. We are saying ‘Yes, this is correct, this is good, this is the best.’ But what can we, the reader do if we find that such an assertion contradicts our own feelings towards the prize winner? Write a letter? Bitch about it on our blogs?

Ryan Paine has something to say about this at his blog. He points to alternative sources of literature such as Chris Flynn’s Torpedo mag, which could easily be compared to McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern for its attitude towards a definition of literature. But as Ryan points out, while we can’t do much about the big-name critical prizes, there are readers’ choice awards such as the Inky Awards or the micro-fiction competition 12words that directly poll readers. Is this method of crowd aggregation the answer? Probably not, since at the moment gaming the system is quite an easy thing to accomplish. But it shows that there are different models out there besides the big-name prize, big-name judges method.

However, sticking our head in the alternative sand isn’t going to make these prizes go away. Remember, these are worth big cash money. An emphasis of late in both the wider Australian workplace and the literary scene has been on the ageing population of Australia, and the subsequent ‘emerging writers’ that this phenomenon has produced. I use emerging somewhat ironically, since a lot of those writers classified as such have been around for quite a some time, but have been obscured by the names that are repeatedly awarded prizes. Rather than effectively pumping up the salaries of these big names, shouldn’t the government and other prize-keepers be spreading the love around to try and foster the kind of broad growth that results in more dynamic long lists? Okay, sure, authors need to eat and winning the big lump sum prizes can help with that, but the encouragement that an emerging or fledgling writer would feel on receiving a nomination for a government-funded prize would be immense. I would rather see 20 emerging or partly established authors receive a $1,000 prize than one author receive a $20,000 prize (though I can most certainly be considered biased in this situation, given my hobby/fledgling writer status).

Literary prize culture isn’t going to change any time soon. The media still needs their stars to invite to Sunrise, and publishers still need stickers to pin to the front of books to boost sales. But if we can start generating discussion for alternative means of awarding great writers now, then who knows? One of the people joining in the chatter could be a future dispenser of a grant, and we may begin to see real shift in attitude in the way prizes are awarded.

Other links of interest:

Long live fiction: A guide to fiction online.

Helen Garner in conversation with Jennifer Byrne.

Ten rules for writing fiction, parts one and two.

MJ Hyland on writing fiction being really tricky shit.

Related posts:

1. Untangling the Web #2
2. Untangling the Web #1
3. RmX Vs. The Notorious L.I.T.

photo credit: grytr

Hello all and

welcome to the second edition of ‘Untangling The Web’! UtW’s aim is to become a semi-regular blog built to provide you with some of the trending topics across the Internet that relate to writing and publishing. Hopefully in doing so we’ll be able to generate some discussion and opinions about what’s going on in the world of words. So without further ado, let’s take a look at what’s been going on since last episode!

News–

Infinite supply vs. wavering demand: the cost of e-Books

In the last episode of UtW, I explained the bitchfight disagreement between Macmillan and Amazon in the pricing and distribution of Macmillan’s titles through Amazon’s e-bookshop service (which, incidentally, caused Amazon shares to take a bit of a fall). Essentially Macmillan got what it wanted and Amazon was forced (however willingly or unwillingly) to instate an agency model, whereby Amazon receives a cut of the profits as an e-book selling agent. Shortly after those events, Rupert Murdoch (news giant and owner of Harper Collins) experssed his dislike for Amazon’s default way of doing things and stated he was in talks with Apple to get a better deal through their iBook store in their newly released iPad. A week or so later and we’re starting to see the ramifications of all the dealings, in that both the Harper Collins and Hachette publishers have switched to agency model like Macmillan’s.

So what does this mean for consumers? Well, in general it means that those publishers will be charging higher prices for the privilege of obtaining new-releases that are hitting stores at the same time in hardcover form. This makes sense if you think about the average price of a hardcover being AU$40-50. E-book reader owners will still be able to get their new-release fix, albeit at a more ‘market-appropriate’ price (compared to the flat $9.99 that Amazon was paying) and without delays. Publishers are putting a ‘preserve the value of the words’ spin to this increased pricing, citing Amazon’s scheme as being detrimental to the value of e-books overall and insulting to the authors who may feel their words are worth more. This is, of course, just another way of saying that they think they can charge more and not lose sales.

All this activity has generated a lively amount of discussion on the pricing of e-books, and what sort of level is appropriate. So this week I’d like to focus on the scuttlebutt of how much a patron of e-books should be expected to pay. And let’s start with what some may consider the best price of all: free!

The blog of Smashwords, an e-book publisher and distributor, recently posted an entry that showed the collected statistics for a pricing option in their catalogue called ‘Reader Sets The Price’. With this option enabled, people looking to buy the e-book can pay whatever price they choose, which includes downloading it for free. The results were surprising, indicating that despite the large number of users that chose to download the book for free there was still a decent amount that chose to pay money. Spurred on by this discovery, they took a larger survey of all book sales in order to try and find the ‘magic number’ price that might maximise sales. Their data showed a tendency for more expensive books to yield better profits. Of course, there was the disclaimer that the poll took no account of quality, length, marketing, etc. so there could be various errors applied to the results. But the obvious interpretation to make is that a reader will prefer to pay good money for a book they believe will be good. Time is a precious resource, and if a book is priced at a mere $2, who’s to say that it will be worth the effort?

That’s one example of what a smaller publisher is currently investigating. The reactions to the giant houses’ move to an agency model and the more expensive books that may result has been somewhat tumultuous. Consumers have accused publishers of trying to extort money from early adopters, and publishers have responded with the suggestion that consumers are dopting too much of a ‘Walmart mentality’. That is, thinking that low prices are a right. The main issue for both sides seems to be one of value. What value should an e-book have? Publishers and authors are up against dozens of other possible entertainment avenues: T.V., cinema, games, sport, etc. It seems to be the case that if publishers don’t find an apt price point, the sale of e-books will remain a small market.

But is this necessarily a bad thing? While doomsayers have been predicting the downfall of paper books for years, it’s been a case of trundling on for the paper publishing industry. Analysts often point to the current downfall in readerships for print newspapers as a precursor to books, but the two cases couldn’t be more different. News items inherently fit the Internet mode of delivery; small, easy to digest snippets of information with a couple of pictures or video for added dimension. A novel has none of these attributes, and has therefore necessitated the creation of the technology e-book readers in order to deal with its peculiarities of length and required concentration. The subsuming of print books by e-books is still a long way off, and the price point tug-of-war that is currently being waged could result in that being delayed even further.

Ideas for e-book pricing models:

Moving into fantasy thinking mode for a while, I think individual authors and small-run e-book publishers have the advantage of being able to engage in more creative pricing schemes. Here’s a couple I’ve thought up:

Limited run and sliding scale: In this scheme, as more books are sold in a limited run (of say, 2,000 e-books) the price creeps through a range. Not a huge range, say $1.00-$5.00, but enough to induce a bit of motivation in the buyer to grab their copy before the price increments. This would suit an author who has already released a book and has a small but stable readership.

Marketing by numbers: Your average E-book author generally doesn’t have a huge amount of money to spend on marketing. What they do have (at the risk of sounding slightly judgemental) is a bit of time to spend spreading the word of their creation. This scheme would involve inviting users to spread the word in a number of ways, with each particular method earning points towards a discount. So let’s say a blog post announcing the release of the e-book would earn 5 points, while a Twitter message would earn 1 point. Each point earns you $0.25 off the price of the e-book. Verification of the achievement of the posts would take a lot of time, hence why it might suit someone who is time-rich and money poor.

Rant–

Genre-bender:

Last week the Manjin blog asked a question that’s been posed time and time again, without a solid answer: does genre still matter? Do the walls that separate science fiction from crime or romance still exist, or are they being broken down in an ever expanding catalogue of mashups? After all, a lot of the most popular books are mashups between genres. The Twilight saga is a cross-breed romance/horror, Stephen King often combines fantastical and science fiction elements with crime and horror to great effect, and The Road was a post-apocalyptic love story between father and son. Even smaller publishers are finding success through such categories as ‘dystopian coming-of-age’. And how could I not mention this lesbian crime novel (which was actually produced for a PhD project and is therefore likely to be exceptionally well-written). Once reviewers start trying to describe these genre-benders, the question becomes how finely grained can the classification of genre descend? By the time we get down to describing something as ‘a Norse-influenced post-apocalyptic steampunk noir fantasy series’, how useful is such a label? Not bloody very, in my opinion.

The great yardstick that these genre-benders and indeed genre books in general are measured up to seems to be the ‘literary’ novel. What Meanjin asks is whether there remains a concrete definition of what a literary novel is, what with the silent acceptance of genre writers such as McCartney and Atwood into the literary sections of bookshops everywhere. And to be honest I find it hard to answer such a question. I think that it is certainly a self-perpetuating phenomenon. Like a crack in a pressured pipe, what starts as a small leak will eventually become a gush until the pressure is equalised. Readers growing up now and reading books that are classified as ‘literary’ but contain ideas that aren’t traditionally viewed as being such will be more inclined to include such ideas in their own work. They won’t feel limited to the style that often defines literary novels; the style that everyone knows but still can’t seem to define.

Other opinions:
Neal Stephenson on sci-fi as a literary genre
James Bradley on our inability to define the bounds of literary genres as being a result of deeper, politically and educationally founded, issues

Further links of interest:

Jason Ensor talks to SPUNC on his Twitter tour-de-force of literature links and the usefulness of such a resource (a view which I obviously completely agree with).
Leila at Enemy of Chaos talks writing, feeling, and gaming.
Daily Tech on Google defending its Google Books service.

Let me know what you think! Do you see the increase in price as preserving the value of books? Or do you agree it’s a grab for cash in a so far relatively niche market. What price would you pay for an e-book ? Do you have any more ideas for creative pricing schemes? Make your voice heard in the comments! As always I would like to thank the sources for many of these news articles: @AustLiterature, @Meanjin, @OverLand, and all the myriad people I chat to that provide me links to squirrel away.

Related posts:

1. Untangling the Web #1
2. Untangling the Web #3
3. RmX Vs. The Notorious L.I.T.

photo credit: Dawn Endico

You may have

read about the 17-year-old German author who recently admitted to pulling large chunks of unedited text from another author’s book. Helenne Hegemann’s book, entitled Axolotl Roadkill, in addition to being a bestseller, has also been nominated for a distinguished prize (Google Translated from German to English). This wouldn’t be such a big deal but, in addition to apologising for her lack of transparency, Hegemann has offered a sting in her statement that “There’s no such thing as originality anyway, just authenticity.” Her feeling is that in growing up in an Internet culture, her generation is one that considers information a free and labile thing. Attribution is rarely considered for, say, a meme or a humorous office email.

Obviously her publisher is pleading ignorance and will be looking to settle with the unnamed blogger, but this case establishes some interesting boundaries. If we look at the scientific paper publishing sector, attribution must be given for a piece of data. A citation is inserted, the author is notified, and everyone is happy. But if Hegemann had gone down this path, would a publishing house have allowed her to pull “about a page” of material from another author, even if permission was given and a citation inserted?  What if it were a paragraph? What if it were an entire chapter? To whom go the spoils of prizes? Are readers informed right there on the page the following section is pulled from another author? Or are there just thanks in the ‘liner-notes’?

To try and clean up some of these questions by analogy, I tried to do some research into what I imagined was the relatively well-regulated practise of sampling and remixing in the music industry (and by research, I mean hitting up the wiki article on sampling and going through all the external links). My hazy recollection of talking with a muso a while back was that it was generally a time-limited thing; anything shorter than ten seconds or so was fair game. Turns out that my memory was (as always) completely wrong, with the recent court ruling of Bridgeport Music Inc. vs. Dimension Films stating that any unlicensed sampling would be considered copyright infringement. In fact, as recently as 2008, Kraftwerk successfully brought to court the case that sampling even one single drumbeat was enough for an infringement to occur. Sheesh! I would have thought those guys were old cool enough to think someone sampling their work was a good thing?

So if the music world is closing its doors on sampling even the tiniest note without permission, where does that leave us with literature? Will future Internet-generation authors embrace the idea of remixing the words they find in their endless travels through the tubes, or will the litigation of big names scare them off? If an author finds a random blog, decides to yoink some words, and no-one ever finds out, has she committed a crime? For me it seems to come down to the near-impossible to discern line between cryptomnesia (a practise that even Nabokov was famously accused of suffering from) and the wilful plagiarism of another writer’s words. While Hegemann’s case is definitely that of the latter, with the developing information overload of the newer generations becoming greater and greater I don’t think it’s unreasonable to predict that there will be some sticky cases of overlap between the two. In the meantime, I think it’s safe to assume that plagiarism of any kind will continue to be something frowned upon by readers and publishers alike.

A great tool for people who do want their work to be used by all is the creative commons license. And thankfully for young Aussie writers that are looking for a safe place to experiment in remixing words, there is the Remix My Lit project and their production of Through the Clock’s Workings. TtCW is a fully remixable anthology of short stories where readers are encouraged to send in their attempts at producing new angles on the stories contained therein. Check it out if you want to see what good can come of creative commons licensing.

Comments, thoughts? Leave ‘em below!

Further reading:

Slate–The shady one-man corporation that’s destroying hip-hop

NYTimes–Author, 17, Say’s It’s ‘Mixing’, Not Plagiarism

thelocal.de–Young literary star Hegemann counters plagiarism claim

No related posts.

photo credit: pyjama

If there’s one

thing that I’ve been fortunate enough to have throughout my entire life, it’s amazing friends. My high school buddies, my uni mates, my post-grad colleagues; all of them have been supportive, loving, giving folk whose friendship humbles me whenever I slow down enough to think about it.

But it’s the latter group, my post-grad mates, that I’d like to talk about today. Y’see, yesterday was Australia Day, which generally means a day off full of barbeques, beer, and bitching about who is going to win the Triple J Hottest 100. Things were no different yesterday, with Louise and I heading to her mate Shea’s place (amazing garden, and a beautifully warm swimming pool) in the morning, followed by me popping around to fellow PhD sufferer Zoe’s in the afternoon.

Every year the access roads to the fireworks display are blocked off from an early time. This I knew about. What I didn’t know (having only parked miles away before this year) was that parking on the verge outside Zoe’s place was illegal and punishable by a ridiculously large fine. Apparently they do this every year to raise a bit of money for slow points on rich roads stop people from blocking the road for ambulances. If this is the case, parking on the verge with literally none of your car on the road shouldn’t be much of a problem. Apparently it was, and despite my assurances to the parking officer that I had only been in the house for ten minutes (I really had), and look, there’s a space in the driveway of this house that I just walked out from for me to park my car, he gave me a ticket. A $160 ticket.

This pretty much ruined my Australia Day. $160 is a lot of money for a student living out of home. Nevermind the fact that the signs that proclaimed this prohibited parking were about 3 metres of the ground and attached to telegraph poles that did nothing to attract attention to themselves, or the fact that there was no justifiable reason for me being fined considering I was, as I said, not blocking the road or the footpath. Also don’t even concern yourself with the idea that a person who was responsibly sober the entire day can be fined for being the driver so other people can drink, or that the drunk bogans that were screaming obscenities won’t get even the lightest slap on the wrist for their abominable behaviour. No, don’t worry about that, because when it comes to parking on a verge, South Perth council takes their responsibility to fleece your cash very seriously indeed.

Anyway, enough about the stupidity of local councils and the inflexibility of parking ticket officers and back to my friends. I was bummed the entire day, and they all noticed that. So when I left after the fireworks to pick Louise up, they organised a whip around to pay for my ticket. I got into uni this morning and after my run with Dino, I found a fat envelope full of cash that would, with my addition of $10, fully pay for my ticket.

I was absolutely floored. These guys aren’t much more flush than me, and that sort of generosity deserved a god damn medal. Unfortunately I didn’t have one handy, so instead I decided to pay it forward. So in all of our names, I donated an equivalent sum to the Red Cross Australia Haiti Appeal. Because if there’s one thing that I’d like Australians to be known by, it’d be our honesty and our decency, not our tendency to get drunk and act like dick heads. So if you’re like me and you hate Australia Day and all the faux-nationalism that it inspires, why not show that you’re not like the rest of the drunk bogans and make an example of the generosity that Australians are supposed to be capable of? Get a few friends together, chip in $5 or even $10 and you’ve made a substantial donation already. If you hit up that link you can make a single donation or a subscription, and it’s all tax deductible if that’s something that concerns you.

So thanks to all my mates for organising that, and I hope this inspires at least one person to go and give some of their money to the people in Haiti. Because for all the media circus surrounding it, there are people that have lost all their friends, their family, there houses and their possessions,  and they do seriously need our help. So come on Aussies, show ‘em what we’ve got.

No related posts.

photo credit: Rusty Stewart

I have just

finished watching the beautiful, eloquent novelist Chimamanda Adichie give a speech on ‘the danger of the single story’ (thank you to Aditi for tweeting about it, else I might have missed it in the TED talks feed). She speaks on the danger of allowing one’s self to assume that the representations of a people in the media are indicative of the people as a whole. In essence, allowing our views of a race or country of people to be governed by a single story of that people. She cites her own weakness during a trip to America, where the saturation of the media by reports of Mexicans abusing immigration laws and rorting the medical system compelled her to believe this image. When she actually visited Mexico and found a people that were happy where they were, and not desperate to escape across the border, she felt a deep sense of shame at the fact that she had been taken in by the single story of the Mexicans as told by the American media.

It struck me from early in her talk that this idea of a single story could very easily be applied to that of the single story of the Aboriginal as told by the Australian media. Throughout my life I have been told many stories of Aboriginals by many different sources: a censored version of the history of colonisation told by a patriotic social studies teacher during high school; bitter essays on the impact of accommodating Aboriginal benefits in the national budget; racist jokes told over and over again by children, adults, and those who should know better. Even the photo used at the top of this post is an example of the single story of the Aboriginal. Could I as easily find a picture of an Aboriginal child chilling out in front of a computer, or catching a bus to school with his friends? These tellings seem to me to be different chapters from the same single story of the Aboriginals, one that we have allowed to be weaved through our indifference to seeking out more stories, stories told by themselves or translated by those who have at least lived among them. I am guilty of this. Before I met my now very dear friend Steph, I had not considered seeking out stories of Aboriginals, content to have my views shaped by the incidental information offered by the media. She pointed me in the direction of W. E. H. Stanner’s essays on Aboriginal life, and with the addition of just one story, my perception was instantly changed. As my prejudice was uncovered, I was shamed as Chimamanda was shamed when she encountered the Mexicans.

In her talk, Chimamanda says:

‘The danger of stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete.’

We must seek out multiple stories, or at the very least keep in mind the existence of multiple stories, so that when contact is made we do not fall prey to a prejudice of pity, anger, or scorn. Only in this way can an open and meaningful connection between two human beings be achieved. I am not a great studier of Aboriginal history or their modern social behaviour, but I invite anyone that is to comment. I’d love to hear whether my application of Chimamanda’s arguments is accurate or indeed relevant.

You can find Chimamanda’s video here.

You can find W. E. H. Stanner’s book of essays for order within Australia here.

Related posts:

1. New story up at The Clearfield Review
2. Book List: August + September