Near enough to 25 years ago my friend Vincent O’Sullivan came to Flinders University for a year as Research Fellow. Vince was, and continues to be, a wonderful writer, a brilliant wit, a splendid conversationalist, a stern opponent in argument and, in short, excellent company.
Every week or so, we would retreat to Rigoni’s in Leigh Street for a relaxed yarn about writing, sport, the world and its ways. While we worked on our bottle of the house red and tortellini alla panna (we never ordered anything else), or when we had moved on to Tattersall’s baroque saloon bar for a post-prandial ‘cleanser’ or two, I would often regale him with some new idea I had for a story or satirical piece or essay, because Vince was a generous and an acute literary mentor.
The trouble with my ideas, however, was that they existed either only in my head, like Keats’s ‘unheard melodies’, or in the form of cryptic reminders in my spiral notebook. For example: ‘A bloke who gradually realises that other people are stealing his personal anecdotes and telling them about themselves discovers parts of his body are disappearing.’ And, a few pages later: ‘Someone who constantly hears his name being mysteriously called in crowds, shops, etc.’ Or again: ‘Use Smetana’s deafness, the note ringing constantly in his ear, as a motif.’ Or: ‘Story about going to the Picasso Exhibition.’ Or a scrawled speculation: ‘Story based on how dog lovers become obsessed by their dogs,’ and so on.
One day in the winter of that year, we met as usual and some half hour or so into our conversation I said that while travelling into town I’d had a ‘terrific idea’ for a short story. Vince looked at me not with the usual interest and attentiveness but, on the contrary, with an uncharacteristic hint of exasperation.
‘Look, mate,’ he said, ‘why don’t you write these bloody stories instead of just talking about them?’
I admit to having been slightly shocked but when, later, I examined my reaction, I realised it was not so much that I was surprised at Vince’s sudden toughness as that I recognised with enormous apprehension that my safe little world of ‘terrific ideas for stories’ would have to be translated into action or cease to carry any weight. In short, I’d have to ‘write the bloody things’.
At just about that same time Christopher