Who dares to wear the Israeli flag?

An extract from Dr Rodney Syme’s book about the right of all adults to avail themselves of euthanasia prompted a strong response from readers.

A mountain of mail arrived in response to the extract, last week, from Rodney Syme’s book, A Completed Life, in which he argued for the right of all competent adults to decide when to end their lives.

Syme, a doctor in Victoria for decades before his own death in 2021, made the point that the frail aged, and those with dementia, don’t qualify for euthanasia, but he thinks many might want it.

Your letters suggest that he’s right.

In truth, I didn’t get a single letter arguing against euthanasia for competent adults.

Harry Blutstein of Northcote, Victoria, wrote to say: “Once dementia kills the self, what’s left? Nothing that I believe worth living for. It is my life and should be my choice … What then are my options? … What I would like to see is for the law to be changed to allow me, while I’m still competent, to include an enforceable request for euthanasia for my future incompetent self.”

The nephew of a man who availed himself of Voluntary Assisted Dying in Fremantle Hospital when he was “entirely compos mentis and obviously in his last days suffering from bone cancer” said the family “all spoke about how the situation could have been much worse if he had dementia. I have two friends whose mothers were so afflicted that they ended up in foetal positions in their beds unable to see, talk or be comforted … many of my friends dread dementia most of all because of the loss of ability to make the choice to die on our own terms.”

Jenny McKellar wrote a loving note about her mother, who died in a nursing home at the age of 101, saying “she did ballroom dancing until she was 97 or so. She was happy. She never complained. Ever. She did not have dementia as such – just old age brain deterioration. She was able to enjoy an amazing 100th birthday with 40 odd relatives and proudly received her photos and letter from the Queen. She was fed well, and the carers were kind. But oh, my lord what a boring life she had.

“Many a time when I would visit her, she would be half asleep in her chair in the lounge watching the same Andre Rieu video again and again … I absolutely do not want my last years to be in a nursing home … I wish we were like the Netherlands. Having seen the sadness of many of the other residents in Mum’s nursing home, who had no meaning to their lives anymore (bedridden, being spoon fed, mostly incoherent if they did ever try to speak, incontinent, deaf, bored, lonely) I know I will do everything I can to not end up like that.”

Syme’s book is available from Dying With Dignity (Victoria), who tell me that his adult children were thrilled with your reception to the piece, too, so thank you to all who got in touch.

■ ■ ■

Georgia Blain c 1971 from the book The Museum of Words; a collection of short stories by Blain, called We All Lived In Bondi Then, is out now.

A thousand books cross my desk each year, and I can’t possibly mention all of them, but I’d like to make special note of We All Lived In Bondi Then by the late Georgia Blain.

It’s a short story collection, and the title comes from the last one, which is everything you remember about being a young drunk adult in a share house.

Blain (pictured above in about 1971) describes the apartment where a party is to be held: “We all lived in Bondi then, in flats that were two up, two down … the bathrooms had a mirrored cupboard wedged between two windows … most were carpeted in browns or greens; the fancier ones had polished boards … We furnished them with street finds – sagging lounges, and wooden beds with rusted springs … Our art consisted of posters, our saucepans were aluminium with anodised lids in jade green and fire engine red …”

You can see it all, can’t you?

Blain died in 2016; she was short-listed during her writing life for many awards, among them the NSW, Victorian and SA Premier’s Literary Awards, the ALS Gold Medal, the Stella Prize, and the Nita B. Kibble award. Charlotte Wood has written a beautiful foreword to the collection, which is lovingly published by Scribe.

■ ■ ■

Speaking of the beachside suburbs, what do you think when you think Manly?

The beach? The ferry?

Well, there’s more to it, including a new literature festival, which will this year feature locals Tom Keneally and Julia Baird, alongside more than 70 writers, academics and journalists, discussing books. Keneally, now 88 and nowhere near requesting euthanasia, will open proceedings with a special evening event on Thursday March 14. You’ll find details online.

■ ■ ■

Speaking of short stories, if you fancy writing one, the Furphy Literary Award is calling for entries.

The competition is stiff: the winner of the 2023 competition was Perth journalist Jen Rewell for her offbeat love story, and the 2022 winner was established author and poet Cate Kennedy.

The judging panel comprises Anson Cameron, John Harms, Margaret Hickey, Stephanie Holt, John Kerr and Thornton McCamish. Of last year’s competition, they said: “We received many entries, of such high standard, that selecting a long list and narrowing it down to a short list was not easy. We want to acknowledge everyone who entered and please do so again next year. We love reading what you submit.”

There were more than 620 entries in 2023. The first prize is $15,000, a residency at La Trobe University and pride of place in the Furphy Anthology 2024 – a hardback collection of the top 16 stories of the year, known for its striking cover, which changes each year.

■ ■ ■

Praiseworthy by Alexis Wright has been published abroad, to great acclaim.

Alexis Wright’s Praiseworthy has been released in the UK and the US, and here is what some of the critics are saying:

● “Unforgettable.” – Publishers Weekly.

● “A mind-altering experience.” – Astrid
Edwards, Times Literary Supplement.

● “I’m awed by the range, experiment and political intelligence of Wright’s work: she is vital on the subject of land and people.” – Robert Macfarlane, New York Times Book Review.

The New York Times has published a profile, which says Wright, 73, “is arguably the most important Aboriginal Australian – or simply Australian – writer alive today.”

Wright’s publisher, Ivor Indyk, will be thrilled. He’s done so much to champion Australian writers, who might otherwise be a hard sell.

■ ■ ■

A Sydney writer wants to show her support for the campaign to bring home the Jewish hostages.

You have perhaps noticed a few Australian writers getting around in Palestinian scarfs. I know one writer who wanted to show her support for the campaign to bring home the Jewish hostages. To that end, said told me she was planning to turn up at the Sydney Writers’ Festival in a dress featuring the Israeli flag, and I was like, please be joking and she was like: “Of course I’m joking, I’d never get out alive, no, kidding, I’d never get in.”

■ ■ ■

The End Of The Morning, a novel by Chairmain Clift, was incomplete at the time of her death.

The final, autobiographical novel by Charmian Clift, The End of the Morning, is to be published by NewSouth in April. She did not live to complete it, but it works as a novella, packaged with a new selection of Clift’s essays and an afterword from her biographer Nadia Wheatley, whose The Life and Myth of Charmian Clift was described by critic Peter Craven as “one of the greatest Australian biographies” (it won The Age Non-Fiction Book of the Year and the NSW Premier’s Australian History Prize).

Wheatley said the unfinished book is a fictionalised version of Clift’s childhood in Kiama on the NSW South Coast, between the two world wars. It will be accompanied by 30 of Clift’s essays, all currently out-of-print. The publisher says: “Readers of George Johnston, Charmian Clift’s husband, will recognise the character of Cressida Morley from his novels. This book will be an opportunity to meet ‘the girl with sand between her toes’.” It comes just ahead of the release of So Long, Marianne a Canadian-Norwegian series, in which Clift will be played by Australian actor Anna Torv.

■ ■ ■

Scott Pape, better known as the Barefoot Investor, has warned his hundreds of thousands of readers, many of them young people, to steer clear of Facebook videos in which he seems to be spruiking financial products. He is the latest Australian celebrity to have found himself starring in a “deep fake” video, where he appears to be talking but it’s not actually him.

Pape says he showed his Dad, who couldn’t quite get over the fact that it wasn’t really his son. But it’s all good, because when Pape “reported it to Facebook, they said they were immediately dispatching a crack team of ninjas” to track down the culprits …

“Yeah, nah,” he says. “They didn’t even bother responding.”

Of course they didn’t. And listen, I know it’s become very fashionable to bag the so-called “mainstream media” for being all things awful, but as far as I can remember, we have never live-streamed suicides, or massacres; we don’t host child pornography, or make fake video so as to encourage people to lose their life savings.

Which is another way of saying: you’d miss us if we went.

■ ■ ■

Today’s pages: there’s another book about the assassination of JFK! Happily we have Paul Monk to review it for us. Welcome back Robyn Walton, who does our crime reviews. We have an extract from a new book about refugees lucky enough to find a home in Australia, plus we have a review of Tim Flannery’s book about dinosaur sharks, written with his daughter. And the poem! It’s … well, it’s saucy, innit? It was such a pleasure to read the mail this week; you can keep it coming to me at @overingtonc on Instagram or else by email at [e-mail]