Dear Mr Toltz,
I am Australia's most well-read amateur boxer. I am writing to you due to an unfulfilled obligation to a dear friend whose name I cannot remember. I met this person during a particularly adventurous evening which involved lederhosen, many high calibre hallucinogenics and a German-themed restaurant in the Dandenong's called Cuckoos. Please bear with me and my fruity tale, as it may get a little ripe.
In December 2014 I bumped into the aforementioned, unnamed associate at the tail end of music festival bender. I at once recalled a vague promise I made to him on an event-filled bus ride from Cuckoos to Chapel Street. You must forgive my rather sketchy memory - it's hard to know whether it's the boxing, the benders or the hallucinogenics, but my recall is less than perfect these days. It may be a combination of all of those factors -I'd be interested in your opinion? I am not sure if there are any remedies but my doctor mentioned something about calamari supplements? Or was that my monger? I digress.
This particular man, who was dressed at the time as an alluring nematode in a sheer silver onesie, hailed me from the fetid slopes of the Supernatural Amphitheatre. It was dawning Day Three of the Meredith Music Festival, a rather precarious time when most sensible people have turned in. I noticed his glistening costume and we reconnected on several dimensions. He immediately queried me about the pact we'd made on that bus trip, back in the day/night.
On that magical mystery bus tour, we had a moment. We both professed to a startlingly savage love of literature; I use that adverb and phrasing accurately, for due to the cocktail of stimulants we'd ingested at the time, the lack of safe seating on the bus, the speed it seemed to be travelling and the curvaceous, mountainous road we were descending, we proclaimed our love of books with the fervour of those who are convinced they will soon be killed.
As we screeched and leered at each other, our sweaty hands gripped the leather bus straps with grim intent while our bodies careened around the cabin like multi-balls in a pinball machine. I had just finished reading A fraction of the whole and he had read something less memorable, as I don't recall. Fortunately, he too had read your remarkable book. As we swung sickeningly around corners, shouting at each other above the music, our bodies veered away, then drew dangerously close, then suddenly far away again, we somehow scrapped out a meaningful conversation.
It was hard to hear each other over the extremely loud and incredible pumping disco music on the party bus, but we both acknowledged the tremendous joy that was transferred from your mind, to the page and into our existential experience. This appreciation was at the time, a powerful, shared realisation. As his pallid sweaty face lurched toward mine, our lips curled into the grimacing smile of those suffering an epiphany, of sorts. We made our pact right there, on the bus, white socks pulled knee-high and ridiculously small hats cocked at rakish angles, that I would write a letter to you, stating that your book was a masterpiece and professing our unceasing admiration. It was to be my heroes quest.
So it was with a particular feeling of dread I contemplated my response to this shimmering worm of a man on the foothills of that 2014 festival. My sinking feeling was compounded by an onset of vertigo resulting from the depleted supply of pharmaceuticals that were no longer in my bloodstream, or on my person. It was a moment of truth; in which I knew I had to lie. "Of course I wrote that letter to Steve! NO! He never wrote back, the prick. Probably too busy". His look of well-founded disbelief met my twitching refusal to let an inconvenient truth poison my proudest achievement. "No shit? Amazing you did that, man."
Were you too busy Steve? I'd like to think so. In your defence you were producing Quicksand at that time, leaving less yourself less time to respond to those unsent letters clogging the imaginative letterbox. Regardless, this untruth I uttered haunted me for several metres after I left that worm on the hill and slumped into an unwashed coma in a freezing tent. But the pledge was not fulfilled, and it lodged somewhere inside me like a roundworm in my lower intestine.
Jump around in time with me again Steve, like an episode of Sliders, and the temporal lurch finds me in a musty bookshop in North Fitzroy, hungover, over-caffeinated and spouting literary opinions to an unimpressed book clerk. I was wearing a Moonboot and fresh haircut, and I was rammed full of codeine. The boot and painkillers were due to the ankle injury sustained the two nights previously after throwing myself from a balcony at an LCD Sound System Concert. I should mention I am forty years old, and not one of your younger, immature readers.
My brother had just arrived home after several years in Dhaka and was looking forward to his new girlfriend arriving from Bangladesh. She is from Boston. He asked me, Australia's most well-read amateur boxer, what Australian fiction he should give her. I immediately compiled a shortlist of appropriate tiles: Monkey Grip, This Fortunate Life, Death of a River Guide, All that I am. etc. But before I could utter Shadowboxing, the clerk chimed in with 'Hannah Kent'. Well Steve, I turned on her like you would turn on someone who had stepped on the back of your thong.
"Hannah Kent? There has never been a more overrated, monotonous account of an overworked Finnish serf penned by an Australian exchange student-cum-literary darling written in the last five years! If you want a period drama with more juice, I'd recommend His bloody project. For we madam, are seeking Australian books by Australian authors, set in Australia ". Spinning back toward my harrowed and embarrassed younger sibling, my eyes caught the starry spine of your singular creation.
"Here is the greatest work of Australian fiction ever produced" I announced, handing him your book, and glaring at the clerk, daring her counter argument (I think she scribbled a note). "I once wrote a letter to the author" I announced. Steve, I know now how Judas Iscariot felt, as the cock crowed.
We bought the copy and scurried out of the bookstore, to the relief of the clerk, and I distanced myself once more from that horrid lie. But the beautiful truth I could not escape from is, was and forever will be, that your book is an inspiration. Many know it; I wish the whole world could read it. In fact, it is so great I’ve considered reading it again, an honour I’ve bestowed only two other books – Catch 22 & The Old Man and the Sea. Time and books are precious - so many contenders, with new up and comers, always on the make. Like Floyd Mayweather, I don’t do rematches, no backward steps – unless there is a significant prize purse Steve, which for an amateur boxer like me is, by definition, not so good. But I think for A Fraction of the Whole, I just maybe could make an exception.
Jump with me once more Steve, Sliders style, in the penultimate slide in this journey, to nearer to now. I received a text from my brothers' girlfriend 's friend saying she read your book (my brother's girlfriend had given it to her) and that they had passed it on to others - everybody loves it Steve! I guess it was published over seven years ago, but many new Australians and older ones, and non-Australians, including Americans, are discovering your work. They too have found the joy and inspiration that weird worm guy and I did. It is a ripping yarn, packed tight with witticisms, wisdom and fat bastards in Thailand. Did you know that it lends itself so well to being read aloud? The pace of the human voice allows the sentiments to land more deeply.
Now I feel much better, Steve. I even remember the worm guy’s name - It's Nick! Well, Nick loved your book too. Mission Accomplished. I woke at 4am this morning and wrote this out in my head, then typed it out, as you can tell by now. I'm probably still a bit drunk and I have a yoga class soon, but I had to squeeze this letter off. I can't live with that lie anymore -it's been itching at my anus. I'll send a copy of this letter to what's-his-name Nick, or maybe I'll print it off and keep a folded copy stuffed into my pants while I dance around at Rainbow Serpent Festival. I'll have it on me, then, when I spy that man once more. This time I'll have the truth to tell, and the proof in my pocket.
Yours in ferocity,
Andrew Costello
151 Headland Road
North Curl Cur 2099
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