Stephen Orr speaks to the Friends of the Barr Smith Library

In 2016 the Friends of the Barr Smith Library have teamed up with Wakefield Press to present a series of talks by Wakefield Press authors. On 21 April, renowned novelist Stephen Orr entertained the masses (despite attesting that he prefers to 'terrify') with an overview of his writing career, beginning with this fitting reflection on the Barr Smith itself.
You can listen to Stephen's speech in its entirety here thanks to Radio Adelaide.
 
I first came to the Barr Smith twenty years ago. Sat in a corner, somewhere. Admired the spray-on concrete ceiling, the flickering lights, the books about mycology. Eventually, I sharpened my pencil and began. What might’ve been a career; although it’s mostly felt like a hobby; what might’ve been the Great Australian novel; although the remaindered fragments of the 2000 Vogel-runner-up, Attempts to Draw Jesus, are scattered far and wide. The pages yellow; the glue fails; the spine cracks. You find a copy (inscribed) at the Port Dock market. $3.00, or negotiable.
Point being. I was off and running. On a career that’s had more downs than ups, lows than highs, disappointments than vindications. Henry Lawson went through something similar. His advice to Australian writers was to ‘study elementary anatomy, especially as it applies to the cranium, and then shoot yourself carefully with the aid of a looking glass.’ Ninety years later, George Johnston felt the same way. Living on the Greek island of Hydra in 1958, he explained his and Charmaine Clift’s combined income of 125 pounds ‘comes from five books in circulation or accepted, two foreign translations, one sale of foreign serial rights, an earlier novel and certain magazine extracts. For this, and all the work it represents, the return…I’m sure you’ll agree is hardly worth while.’
Hardly worth while. But, he explained, ‘I have all sorts of writing plans and shall probably go on producing a novel a year for many years to come.’ This, as all writers know, is the curse of perpetual frustration. He explained it away by saying, ‘I have, you see, enough confidence in myself at least…’
Back to the Barr Smith; two levels below here. The terrazzo dunnies with their outstanding graffiti. Phil Grummet, a character in my second published book, Hill of Grace, studies pharmacology at Adelaide University, but he has a bent for other things (if you know what I mean). This includes perfecting his poetic gifts on the dunny walls (a sort of budget Mastersingers of Nuremburg). Someone drills holes in the walls. Just enough to cop an eyeful. But Phil writes messages like, Not Recommended for Children, or, Insert Here. He adds the predictable: Arts Degrees, please take a single sheet, above the bog paper, and tries some Eliot on the back of the door. We shall never cease from exploring. And he doesn’t. Ending up at Mt Crawford vomiting mushrooms he mistakes for the magic variety.
The Barr Smith has changed. I spent hours watching flies trying to escape from cobwebs, the spider emerging, the worst of natural selection as my fiction went unwritten. I wrote my first five books here. Longhand. Clearing my throat when people talked, and the librarians didn’t spring to life, jumping on the miscreants like an elite SS troop. Eventually I’d give up and move, throwing a angry glance, not that anyone cared. Silence, I think, is the most valuable thing of all. Up there with love, wisdom, an unexpected sunburst.

I loved the Barr Smith’s retro fifties feel, although it wasn’t actually retro. The desks, the chairs, the Khrushchev-era windows. The idea that a million people had written a million books about a million topics and, if I had the time, I could explore them all. That’s always what’s excited me. The potential to know. I could never understand sport. That only ever had the potential to kick a bit further, run a bit faster. So what? So I’d sit there for an hour after I’d finished writing. Looking through maths texts, wondering why I was looking through maths texts. Reading a history of sans serif types, or the Hitler Youth. The same thing I did as a kid, at school. The grass was always green, the sandwiches stale and sweaty. But if you were early enough, and got a copy of Asterix, your lunch would be bearable.
That’s why libraries matters. Why the Barr Smith matters. All of this knowledge is held in trust. For our great great grandkids. God knows they’ll have Weatherill’s plutonium to deal with, so we should leave them something they actually want. I hope the books remain. The heavy, smelly paper types. I hope someone doesn’t come in, digitise them, and then arrange a book burning on the Barr Smith lawns. Or maybe others have that in mind? The Advertiser. Winston Smith snipping away at the truth, producing a world view pleasing to the North Terrace mob. Bill and Ben, flower pot men. Praising ham strings and high octane stupidity in equal measure.
So, now you’re saying. My, he’s a bit angry, isn’t he? To which I reply: Moi? Problem being, speaking writers, it seems, are meant to entertain audiences these days. I prefer to terrify. And at this, Patrick White was the best. If I can share a selected quote: ‘The Bicentennial circus tends to hide from us the fact that we are no longer a democracy. We are a country run by and for millionaires and by a prime minister who toadies to them.’ Or: ‘In a society where there has been such a serious lapse in integrity, our politicians’ attitude to uranium isn’t surprising.’ Wonder what he’d make of Kimba, glowing with golden wheat, sheep, and other things?
 

Listen to the rest of Stephen's speech here thanks to Radio Adelaide.