Chris Womersley’s new novel is about the death of a certain kind of bohemian idealism.Credit:Simon Schluter
InThe Diplomat,we learn that Edward Degraves and his wife,Gertrude,two members of the group of young artists that carried out the Picasso plot,subsequently absconded to London to pursue their artistic careers. Once there,however,they devoted most of their energy to the business of becoming serious drug addicts,funding their seedy yet expensive lifestyle via Gertrude’s gift for forgery.
The Diplomat opens with Edward returning to Melbourne in late 1991,following Gertrude’s death from an overdose. It follows him on an uncomfortable tour of his old haunts,in which his awkward encounters with estranged family members and former acquaintances are interspersed with flashbacks that fill in the details of his ill-fated time abroad.
The historical setting and druggy milieu recall the feted “grunge” literature of that era,notably Andrew McGahan’sPraise (1992) and Luke Davies’Candy (1997). But the temporal distance givesThe Diplomat a distinct tenor. That period was arguably the last time that inner-city suburbs such as Fitzroy and St Kilda could plausibly claim to have a genuine countercultural edge. WhereThe Diplomat has a nostalgic tinge,it is here. At least some of its rueful atmosphere can be attributed to an implicit awareness that Edward,as he comes to realise that he has outgrown his youthful hedonism,is moving through a grimy urban environment that is about to be scrubbed clean and culturally neutered by gentrification.
The cover of Chris Womersley’s The Diplomat.
In this sense,The Diplomat is a novel about the death of a certain kind of bohemian idealism. Gertrude’s death gives the theme a symbolic form. The novel makes it plain that she was the talent and the brains of the operation. Her convincing forgeries were more than a pragmatic means of survival;they were a way for her to realise her artistic gifts without compromising herself.
They were a way of refusing to play the distasteful careerist game of networking and self-promotion,every successful deception having the added advantage that it was actively subverting institutions that were generating and sustaining bogus notions of cultural value. Gertrude painted in order to live outside certain social and cultural strictures,accepting the risks involved as part of the inevitable cost.
The overarching fact of her death represents the death of any such possibility. Edward confronts the reality that he was only ever riding Gertrude’s coat tails (his job was to mix the paint). There is no prospect that he might be able to sustain any kind of independent creative existence. Without Gertrude,the intoxicating bohemian notions that once served as a convenient rationalisation for his immersion in the sordid demimonde of drug culture are reduced to ashes. All that remains is the grinding reality of addiction and the invidious choice it seems to present,between relapsing into his destructive lifestyle and making peace with the kind of boring,conventional existence that he had always shunned.