These essays wittily chronicle the “false starts,failures and endless dabbling” of a self-confessed dilettante,in pieces published over several years,mostly inThe Monthly. In one,he invokes Kurt Vonnegut’s advice to,like the rally participants,“leap boldly off cliffs and … grow wings on the way down”.
Skinner moves to Melbourne envisaging a life of hobnobbing at rooftop bars and reading Russian novels. (Don’t we all?) Fate,or economics,has other plans,and he ends up in non-jobs,couch-surfing between suburbs,enduring the purgatory of dishwashing and the monotony of being a tour guide. He tells his uncle that he can’t take up jobs like forklift driving because he’s a full-time reader ofWar and Peace. Fortune favours him with a cushier job at a bookshop before COVID intervenes.
There’s time for literary ventures amid the menial labour. In 2013,Skinner foundedThe Canary Press,“Australia’s greatest (and only) short-story magazine”,which ran for 10 issues,and he reckons here with its supposed failure.
This comes across as a humblebrag,but what stops the whole book from being one is its droll,self-deprecating prose and delightfully silly anecdotes. Bookstores with outstanding payments to the magazine are chased up by Linda McMackerson,a formidable – entirely fictional – accountant. “We spread rumours that she was an Olympic silver medallist in the javelin,” Skinner writes. “And that she was still angry about coming second.”
At one point,Skinner goes camel-trekking with his parents. The camels break loose and charge towards the wagon,and a bushman commands Skinner to obstruct their path. “Leadership is a hard-to-pin-down quality,” he says,“But if,after two days of knowing someone,they tell you to jump in front of a pack of charging camels and you find yourself willingly obliging,then they’ve probably got it.”