Six Second Summary
Stimulus Booklet:
Text One (Poem) – The Core (Steve Taylor)
It can take a whole lifetime to become yourself
years of feeling adrift and alone
trying to be someone you could never be
wearing clothes that don’t fit you
stammering in a language you weren’t meant to speak
trying to pass yourself off as normal
but always feeling clumsy and unnatural
like a stranger pretending to be at home
and knowing that everyone can sense your strangeness
and resents you because you don’t belong.
But slowly, through years of exploration
you see landmarks that you somehow recognise
hear vague whispers that seem to make sense
strangely familiar words, as if you had spoken them yourself
ideas that resonate deep down, as if you already knew them
and slowly, your confidence grows,
and you walk faster, now you sense the right direction
and feel the magnetic pull of home.
And now you begin to excavate,
to peel away the layers of conditioning
to shed the skins of your flimsy, false self
to discard those habits and desires which you absorbed until
you reach the solid rock beneath
the shining molten core of you.
And now there’s no more uncertainty
your path is clear, your course is fixed,
and this bedrock of your being is so solid and stable
that there’s no need for acceptance or belonging
no fear of exclusion or ridicule
and everything you is right and true
and deep and whole with authenticity.
But don’t stop. This is only the half-way point –
maybe even just the beginning.
Once you’ve reached the core,
keep exploring, but more subtly
keep excavating, but more delicately
and you’ll keep unearthing new layers, finding new depths
until you reach the point which is no point
where the core dissolves
and the solid rock melts like ice
and the self loses its boundary
and expands to encompass the whole.
A self even stronger and more true
because it’s no self at all.
Text Two (Non-fiction extract) – Speaking Volumes (Ramona Koval)
There are moments in an interview when you hold your breath, not sure if the next move will bring public humiliation or elated relief. Televised surgery comes to mind, where the surgeon’s deft moves are exposed to the public gaze: will they gasp with delight at your skill, or will they watch your patient bleed to death? Perhaps the patient will even rise up from the operating table, wrestle the scalpel out of your hands, and cut your throat.
........
There is a small group of writers who never give interviews, or who insist on rigid rules about correcting the transcript, or who only consent to written interviews by email. For example, Vladimir Nabokov objected to the ‘bogus formality’ of the interview, and J.M. Coetzee said that he objected to ‘an exchange with a complete stranger, yet a stranger permitted by the conventions of the genre to cross the boundaries of what is proper in conversation between strangers.’ You will find none of them here. These interviews, for broadcast and performance, are with writers who are happy to engage with a good reader, an intelligent audience, and the world at large.
These are writers who enjoy coming out of the legendary solitary room and speaking about what it was that compelled them to stay there. Some consider the role of the writer to be that of a public intellectual, and enjoy discussing their ideas with others. For other writers, the interview might be one of the only ways they can make a direct statement about the world, or impart what they have learned to a large audience – or perhaps they simply enjoy the attention. Whatever the attitude to the interview, it can get under the skin of some writers, as evidenced by the parodies of the interview form by writers such as Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal, and Evelyn Waugh, who all wrote mock interviews, or even ‘interviewed’ themselves.
What is a literary interview? It is not a casual conversation, nor is it a simple exposition of notable features of the author’s books. It is a theatre piece, a public accounting, a surgical probing, and a highly dangerous act with all kinds of difficult possibilities. How dare the interviewer ask such personal questions? But what does the writer expect, having laid the soul bare in the very essence of the work? And, after all, many of the following interviews were done in staged settings ‐ broadcast studios, in front of audiences at literary festivals, or in the writer’s own homes – so they were hardly ambushes. Consent is implied the moment the writer sits in the chair and faces the interviewer.
........
These interviews are not like those in the Paris Review where authors correct and revise their answers and sign off on the final product. Those interviews can be fascinating; but these are more spontaneous, the product of the alchemy of the moment, of intense preparation and a natural and compulsive curiosity, of voracious reading and delight in being completely immersed in the world and the work of the writer.
Reading through these interviews once more, I see that I am drawn again and again to questions of how one evaluates a life, the getting of wisdom, facing death, the meaning of love, whether a book ever changed the course of history, all mediated through the brilliant use of language. Big questions. To which these great writers give, for our delight, the best of answers.
Text Three (Prose Fiction) – Wants (Grace Paley)
I saw my ex-husband in the street. I was sitting on the steps of the new library. Hello, my life, I said. We had once been married for twenty-seven years, so I felt justified.
He said, What? What life? No life of mine.
I said, O.K. I don't argue when there's real disagreement. I got up and went into the library to see how much I owed them. The librarian said $32 even and you've owed it for eighteen years. I didn't deny anything. Because I don't understand how time passes. I have had those books. I have often thought of them. The library is only two blocks away.
My ex-husband followed me to the Books Returned desk. He interrupted the librarian, who had more to tell. In many ways, he said, as I look back, I attribute the dissolution of our marriage to the fact that you never invited the Bertrams to dinner.
That's possible, I said. But really, if you remember: first, my father was sick that Friday, then the children were born, then I had those Tuesday-night meetings, then the war began. Then we didn't seem to know them anymore. But you're right. I should have had them to dinner.
I gave the librarian a check for $32. Immediately she trusted me, put my past behind her, wiped the record clean, which is just what most other municipal and/or state bureaucracies will not do.
I checked out the two Edith Wharton books I had just returned because I'd read them so long ago and they are more apropos now than ever. They were The House of Mirth and The Children, which is about how life in the United States in New York changed in twenty-seven years fifty years ago.
A nice thing I do remember is breakfast, my ex-husband said. I was surprised. All we ever had was coffee. Then I remembered there was a hole in the back of the kitchen closet which opened into the apartment next door. There, they always ate sugar-cured smoked bacon. It gave us a very grand feeling about breakfast, but we never got stuffed and sluggish.
That was when we were poor, I said.
When were we ever rich? he asked.
Oh, as time went on, as our responsibilities increased, we didn't go in need. You took adequate financial care, I reminded him. The children went to camp four weeks a year and in decent ponchos with sleeping bags and boots, just like everyone else. They looked very nice. Our place was warm in winter, and we had nice red pillows and things.
I wanted a sailboat, he said. But you didn't want anything.
Don't be bitter, I said. It's never too late.
No, he said with a great deal of bitterness. I may get a sailboat. As a matter of fact I have money down on an eighteen-foot two-rigger. I'm doing well this year and can look forward to better. But as for you, it's too late. You'll always want nothing.
He had had a habit throughout the twenty-seven years of making a narrow remark which, like a plumber's snake, could work its way through the ear down the throat, half-way to my heart. He would then disappear, leaving me choking with equipment. What I mean is, I sat down on the library steps and he went away.
I looked through The House of Mirth, but lost interest. I felt extremely accused. Now, it's true, I'm short of requests and absolute requirements. But I do want something.
I want, for instance, to be a different person. I want to be the woman who brings these two books back in two weeks. I want to be the effective citizen who changes the school system and addresses the Board of Estimate on the troubles of this dear urban center.
I had promised my children to end the war before they grew up. I wanted to have been married forever to one person, my ex-husband or my present one. Either has enough character for a whole life, which as it turns out is really not such a long time. You couldn't exhaust either man's qualities or get under the rock of his reasons in one short life.
Just this morning I looked out the window to watch the street for a while and saw that the little sycamores the city had dreamily planted a couple of years before the kids were born had come that day to the prime of their lives.
Well! I decided to bring those two books back to the library. Which proves that when a person or an event comes along to jolt or appraise me I can take some appropriate action, although I am better known for my hospitable remarks.
Questions:
Text One – Poem (4 marks)
How does the poem use metaphor and imagery to represent the process of self-discovery?
Text Two – Non-fiction (4 marks)
How does the text represent the ability of interviews to deepen our understanding of the human experience?
Text Three – Prose Fiction (5 marks)
How does the text represent differing human motivations and behaviours?
Texts One, Two and Three (7 marks)
How do TWO of the given texts represent the complexity of individual human experiences?
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