Abracadabra

Abracadabra—an ancient Aramaic spell, avra kadavra ("It will be created in words")

On his preface to these collected writings, Dessaix describes them as "talks of mine from gala occasions, along with a few chatty but targeted pieces of journalism... [plus] a short story," and on the back cover, he is quoted as calling his journal articles feuilletons. Before I began to read the book, I looked up the translation of feuilletons—"soap operas" was the first translation I came across.

Dessaix prefers to translate the word as "performances"—"a particular kind of brief literary entertainment," an "irreverent jeu d'esprit that our era seems to shy away from." Typically, he gives us the history of the word from its 18th century "suave original French," to its use by the Russians, who were "masters of the form."

By the time the reader gets to Dessaix's own feuilletons in the second section of this book, we already know he loves the Russian language and literature, enjoys the panache and subtlety of the French and their language, and is erudite, intelligent, witty, provocative, opinionated, and fun to listen to (since he regards these writings as "conversation") even when you disagree with him. He is also an inveterate gossip, claiming...

For me, gossip is a kind of choreographed chatting (not just speaking) that goes beyond the hard facts... From my point of view, as I once tried to explain it, " serves a comedic purpose in the drama of our lives. It's an impudent, disruptive game with appearances..." And that's what performance is.

Dessaix's gossip tells us a great deal about him and about his views on such disparate topics as, for example, kissing, reading, writing, "Where Babies Come From" (a chapter title), literature, foreign parts, and "How Enid Blyton Changed My Life" (another chapter title).

Dessaix grew up in "middle class" suburban Sydney. His adoptive father, Tom ("a man of no great consequence at all to anybody apart from me"), was not a reader, nor did he listen to good music, but he loved languages, learned French and Indonesian, and Dessaix says, "he opened window after window in my mind—windows I'd swoop in an out of all my life." In particular, Tom encouraged Dessaix to do whatever it was he wanted to do:

I wanted to dance after I'd seen Red Shoes—who didn't?

"Well dance then," he said, "I'll get you the shoes." And he did. (Me. A boy. In 1950-something).

Marry, don't marry, learn Russian, believe, don't believe, live in Paris (although I'll miss you)—do it. Days are to be happy in.

Tom's "snaps" of his own early travels in Russia, Japan, and Malaya also stirred in Dessaix the urge see the world—so, "off I flew when still a child and still have not quite come home again."

Many of Dessaix's talks were originally given to literary groups or at writers' festivals, and his eclectic reading, especially of Russian classics, is evident in his references to Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Maxim Gorky, Nicolai Gogol, also André Gide, Joseph Campbell, Proust, and Borges. But he refers just as casually to modern writers and to those who were his earliest influence, like Richmal Crompton of the Just William books, Kenneth Grahame and Wind in the Willows, and, especially, to Enid Blyton.

Why Enid Blyton? Because she knew "the secret places children like to escape to." She knew how to take her readers on dangerous and exciting adventures, adventures in which they go to strange places, struggle with enemies, rely on the loyalty of friends, overcome all odds, then, always, return home, just as in traditional hero-stories.

"Every book of Enid Blyton's that I read was about adventuring," says Dessaix, "An adventure is a transforming narrative." He enjoyed the magic of the Faraway Tree stories, but he "fell under the spell of the Famous Five," who provided him with his own "private fantasy land with its own private language."

It was not Gogol who actually changed my life, however. He gave me a voice, but he didn't change my life. I would like to say it was Aquinas or Darwin or, at the very least, Sartre who did, but it was in fact Enid Blyton.

Abracadabra is probably best read a little at a time so that Dessaix's one-sided "conversations," so full of ideas and opinions and changes of scenery, do not get exhausting. However, he is good company. I enjoyed being taken to Ladakh and Ooty and Venice. I agree with him about the media's obsession with sport and share his "disinterest" in watching "men chasing a ball and falling over." And I laughed at his love-letter to his Collins Robert Unabridged French-English English-French Dictionary:

Bonjour, cher dictionnaire! (Here the French would put an exclamation mark—can you hear it? So jubilant, so like a kiss, so much chirpier than our English comma)

I like his comments about the way good fiction can open our minds and challenge "the single-mindedness of the pious today—of those who know what's right and have little curiosity about what others love and have loved at different times in different places and why." And I empathize with his lament over the now minimal coverage of serious literary fiction in The Times Literary Supplement. I enjoyed his assessment of the Lonely Planet Indonesian Phrasebook's entries under ROMANCE, which move directly from "I love you" to "Would you like to meet my parents," followed closely by "I never want to see you again." It reminded me of my own antique pocket-size Italian phrase book which provides phrases for addressing "baggage porters" and "carriage drivers."

One of the last pieces in Abracadabra is an "of-the-cuff" reflection on "Connoisseurs," in which Dessaix suggests his own "appreciation of taste... sites ill with modern sensibilities." Clearly he appreciates the expertise of, for example, curators who create thrilling art exhibitions, and he is dismayed by the way individual expertise in any subject—art, wine, cigar, etc.—now seems so little valued. Dessaix himself is certainly a connoisseur of literary fiction, as several of the pieces in this book demonstrate, and he is also an excellent performer—a master, you might say, of the feuilleton.