Robert Hollingworth’s "Smythe's Theory of Everything" is reviewed by Rocky Dabscheck — music teacher and “frontdude” for Rocky and the Two Bob Millionaires.
George Gershwin composed music which made life a fuller experience for millions, if not billions, of people. The same can be said for Paul McCartney. Sorry. Sir Paul.
Gershwin tried his hand at visual art. Sir Paul, the same. The world enjoys more clutter due to their combined efforts.
"Stones" guitarist Ronny Woods drinks from those same wells; Music and Art. Many a Woods' visual offering has been known to catch and hold the eye. When it comes to music composition, his cupboard, at best, is threadbare. As a guitarist, Woods enjoys a reputation as a superior swimmer to Brian Jones, his ill-fated predecessor.
No doubt there are countless examples of our creative ones spreading their wings. Few fly. Hollingworth would win Moomba's Birdman Rally.
Hollingworth is a rare breed. His art and his words cut it. A longstanding, successful and respected career as an imaginative visual artist, now is only part of Hollingworth's entre into our imagination. It is his relationship with our imagination that separates his approach to these artistic languages. He knocks on our door with his art, but leaves it to us to let ourselves into his world. With his words, he gently takes our hand and leads us into his chambers.
"Smythe's Theory of Everything" is a fine yarn; a delicate mix of the large and small stories comprised within a life. This is Hollingworth's third foray into the world of words. Exposing the factual melancholy, elation, bewilderment and adventure of life via the conduit of fiction.
[Listen to Robert Hollingworth on ABC Radio National’s Life Matters talking about "Smythe's Theory of Everything"]
In 2001, and not on the 11th of September, Robert Hollingworth found a diary penned by a 62 year old resident of a basic, life-defeating, nursing home. That little diary was enough to lead Hollingworth into the often futile, irrational commitment of going to the trouble of writing a novel.
"Smythe's Theory of Everything" takes two paragraphs to highlight the expediential explosion (not quite the big bang) of possibilities life offers us. A six-legged ant has 4,683 options for movement. An eight legged spider has 545,835 permutations on offer. Yet all ants and spiders move their legs in just one sequence. Figure that out writes Hollingworth, and figure it out he does.
At its core, "Smythe's Theory of Everything" is a grand love story between siblings Jack and Kitty. Their relationship is writ large, larger even than the passage of time which allows “Old" to find its way into your bed "Where it curls up beside you forever and ever."
Times, locations, and the narrative voice, are all varied and juxtaposed by the author. This story of desiccated youth, devoured by the ravages of the ageing process, is acted out largely in Melbourne, with the occasional foray further north.
Jack’s physical life is endured on Victorian soil, whist his hopes and passions travel with his sister Kitty. Marriage, children, divorce, work, physical setbacks are all lived out in Melbourne, but the roads out of Melbourne, and Kitty, offer the melancholy, ethereal wistfulness Jack craves.
The nursing home, with Pistol Pete, Jim, Skeleton Joe, Clem and the others, up against Nurse Collier, is the setting for Jack’s only real victory on home soil. The fact Jack, at 62, finds himself ensconced within the boundaries of a nursing home, means even that victory, at best, is pyrrhic.
What happens to Jack, and his fellow band of "oldies", and the financially vulnerable, make up part of the smaller stories, along with gems such as the regret one often feels within seconds of polishing off the last chip of a greasy pack of fish and chips. Games, mainly petanque, and intellect, Smythe's actual theories, provide worthy distraction from life's ultimate futility.
Jack's world when he is with his sister Kitty – the love he profoundly feels for her – gives the answer to the spiders, ants and humans.
George and Ira Gershwin's love for each other produced beauty sublime enough to smash the turgidness of time. McCartney had Lennon to help defy time.
Though their union did not allow them to fly with the angels, Jack had Kitty.
"Smythe's Theory of Everything" is well worth the time it takes to read, and rest assured, Lyndon Baines Johnson would not have said of Robert Hollingworth "That boy can't walk and chew gum at the same time."
“Smythe’s Theory of Everything” is published by Hybrid and is available at Readings and most reputable book stores.
(The author of this review has been known to throw a petanque ball in anger with Robert Hollingworth.)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
