another one joins the monkey grip gang
Sometimes I have fantasies of living in an ivory tower and producing a scholarly work on a particular genre or thing that has captured my imagination, and it's quite likely that it would be on Monkey Grip for me.
I read Monkey Grip back in the days of being at school, spend a warm summers day in doors lying on clean sheets , wondering at the incongruity of the world on paper compared to the cloistered Toorak Gardens world outside my window. Toorak Gardens, of velvet lawns and narrow avenues and pretty gentlemans bungalow, and genteel tennis courts, walking distance from bookshops and Trak Cinema and arthouse films and fine food at Grimaldis, being served by eastern suburb boys in finely pressed white shirts and designer chinos, working part-time en route to their fine stockbroking careers, already emitting vibes of polish and sophistication, driving nice cars and planning dinner parties and collecting cds whilst at university. Those sorts of boys-and their female counterparts, of glossy hair and tans and nice legs and accomplishments, members of the audience at a symphony orchestra performance or Sunday morning church christening.
That world was outside my window; inside the book it was totally different. Monkey Grip was set in 1974-1975, amongst the terrace houses of Carlton that I've previously only associated with Vince Colosimo in Street Hero (ie Italian community). Her gang lived in communal houses, migrated to other cities, disappeared down the coast, wrote plays, shared lovers, were in bands. They created and breathed and read books and were educated and experimental and curious. It was intoxicating, especially when I realised they were all real people.
Gracie was based on Alice Garner; Gracie's dad went on to write many tv scripts and plays, including a free play reading that was featured in the 2001 St Kilda festival, read out at his own home around the corner from where I lived, back in those days. Her sister's band performed at Womadelaide a few years ago. Helen Garner lived in Sydney at the same time as me and found it not dissimiliar... good views, insulated lives. If it sounds as though I've kept a scrapbook monitoring this culture, you are wrong, but I have remembered every connection I've come across in the years since my first reading. Because it's like a conversion.
I was surprised, when watching the 1982 movie, to see The Divinyls play the role of the band; and their manager to also have a cameo; for Vince was the oft spoken of ex-husband of Andy's cousin; a guy who'd perfected the art of using connections to make a career in tabloid rock journalism. But still I envied him, because he'd met the Garners, and because the film is one of those little gems, when the storyline and the background are just as interesting.
In 2000 I dragged my flatmate to the old arthouse twin cinema on Oxford Street for a screening of Pure Shit, (or Pure S..T as it has to be published), which I think was directed by Bert Deling, and is the movie that Nora refers to having a small role in. HG Nelson introduced the movie; when he appeared on the screen in a larish big collared red shirt, playing a guy watering "plants" in a doctors waiting room, the crowd jeered and cheered him. Helen's character is on a fuelled cleaning mission; Max Gilles is probably the greatest comic relief, playing a psychiatrist in charge of the rehab clinic where the orderlies are paid to make the comatose inmates "play" table tennis. The main characters are serious types, living the inner city junkie life amongst this comedy and there is a great house scene set in Carlton where all the guests and people have that delightful mix of bohemian domesticity, certainly not living in squalor but living in the vibrant creative 70s culture associated with the revivial of politics and arts in Australia.
So... on the weekend discovered that Miss Ranmal is another of the Monkey Grip subculture. "Don't you love the references? Cycling through Edinburgh Gardens?" she asks. She too tried to locate and recognise the Melbourne landmarks; however she trumped all my knowledge with a positive sighting of Javo!
"Did you know he has his shop down at Salamanca? He's the tall lanky guy.." I did wonder; a documentary made by the "real" Martin tracked him as he returned to Australia from his French exile, and revisited his former love (Helen Garner), Tasmanian based parents and fellow Hobartian refugee, "Javo". Only he had returned to Hobart and had an asian import shop, was playing the shakuachi in his store. Unfortunately for me, my television decided to go fuzzy, and it was hard to form any visual image of him; I've never been able to locate a copy of that documentary though it would be all the more relevant now that I'm living here. Anyhow kids, his shop is in Salamanca, how exciting to visit.
But then what will I say? Will he be a chatty type like the Brian that the lovely seagreen writes of, who runs her bookshop and re-read out loud a message she'd left him, requesting he hold a book, "You can't handle your ink" he summed up. Oh, exciting days.
I read Monkey Grip back in the days of being at school, spend a warm summers day in doors lying on clean sheets , wondering at the incongruity of the world on paper compared to the cloistered Toorak Gardens world outside my window. Toorak Gardens, of velvet lawns and narrow avenues and pretty gentlemans bungalow, and genteel tennis courts, walking distance from bookshops and Trak Cinema and arthouse films and fine food at Grimaldis, being served by eastern suburb boys in finely pressed white shirts and designer chinos, working part-time en route to their fine stockbroking careers, already emitting vibes of polish and sophistication, driving nice cars and planning dinner parties and collecting cds whilst at university. Those sorts of boys-and their female counterparts, of glossy hair and tans and nice legs and accomplishments, members of the audience at a symphony orchestra performance or Sunday morning church christening.
That world was outside my window; inside the book it was totally different. Monkey Grip was set in 1974-1975, amongst the terrace houses of Carlton that I've previously only associated with Vince Colosimo in Street Hero (ie Italian community). Her gang lived in communal houses, migrated to other cities, disappeared down the coast, wrote plays, shared lovers, were in bands. They created and breathed and read books and were educated and experimental and curious. It was intoxicating, especially when I realised they were all real people.
Gracie was based on Alice Garner; Gracie's dad went on to write many tv scripts and plays, including a free play reading that was featured in the 2001 St Kilda festival, read out at his own home around the corner from where I lived, back in those days. Her sister's band performed at Womadelaide a few years ago. Helen Garner lived in Sydney at the same time as me and found it not dissimiliar... good views, insulated lives. If it sounds as though I've kept a scrapbook monitoring this culture, you are wrong, but I have remembered every connection I've come across in the years since my first reading. Because it's like a conversion.
I was surprised, when watching the 1982 movie, to see The Divinyls play the role of the band; and their manager to also have a cameo; for Vince was the oft spoken of ex-husband of Andy's cousin; a guy who'd perfected the art of using connections to make a career in tabloid rock journalism. But still I envied him, because he'd met the Garners, and because the film is one of those little gems, when the storyline and the background are just as interesting.
In 2000 I dragged my flatmate to the old arthouse twin cinema on Oxford Street for a screening of Pure Shit, (or Pure S..T as it has to be published), which I think was directed by Bert Deling, and is the movie that Nora refers to having a small role in. HG Nelson introduced the movie; when he appeared on the screen in a larish big collared red shirt, playing a guy watering "plants" in a doctors waiting room, the crowd jeered and cheered him. Helen's character is on a fuelled cleaning mission; Max Gilles is probably the greatest comic relief, playing a psychiatrist in charge of the rehab clinic where the orderlies are paid to make the comatose inmates "play" table tennis. The main characters are serious types, living the inner city junkie life amongst this comedy and there is a great house scene set in Carlton where all the guests and people have that delightful mix of bohemian domesticity, certainly not living in squalor but living in the vibrant creative 70s culture associated with the revivial of politics and arts in Australia.
So... on the weekend discovered that Miss Ranmal is another of the Monkey Grip subculture. "Don't you love the references? Cycling through Edinburgh Gardens?" she asks. She too tried to locate and recognise the Melbourne landmarks; however she trumped all my knowledge with a positive sighting of Javo!
"Did you know he has his shop down at Salamanca? He's the tall lanky guy.." I did wonder; a documentary made by the "real" Martin tracked him as he returned to Australia from his French exile, and revisited his former love (Helen Garner), Tasmanian based parents and fellow Hobartian refugee, "Javo". Only he had returned to Hobart and had an asian import shop, was playing the shakuachi in his store. Unfortunately for me, my television decided to go fuzzy, and it was hard to form any visual image of him; I've never been able to locate a copy of that documentary though it would be all the more relevant now that I'm living here. Anyhow kids, his shop is in Salamanca, how exciting to visit.
But then what will I say? Will he be a chatty type like the Brian that the lovely seagreen writes of, who runs her bookshop and re-read out loud a message she'd left him, requesting he hold a book, "You can't handle your ink" he summed up. Oh, exciting days.
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