IN
THE GUTTER...LOOKING AT THE STARS
A Literary Adventure Through Kings Cross
edited by Mandy Sayer and Louis Nowra
reviewed by Stephen
Nicholas
In paraphasing Oscar Wilde to arrive at the title of their collaboration Mandy Sayer and Louis Nowra succinctly describe the nature of Kings Cross.
As a child growing up in Adelaide in the 1960’s and 70’s I heard of Kings Cross. Not from my relatives who lived in Sydney or from the kids at school who had moved from Sydney. It was a distant hub mentioned in news articles. References to the Kings Cross Witch, the Green bans, and the Wayside Chapel piqued my childhood curiosity. Did the Witch dresslike Christchurch’s Wizard? Why were the bans green if there were communists in charge? It sounded both dangerous and liberating.
Eventually I joined the exodus from Adelaide and due to good fortune found myself living in a vibrant share household in that very same Kings Cross. All my flatmates and most of our friends were from interstate or overseas. And that has always been my impression of the Cross, a hive of activity that attracts people from far and wide.
“Our criteria
were to present writing of quality that not only gave a vivid picture
of Kings Cross and its people but avoided the journalists’ cliche of
‘the dirty half-mile’.” say Sayer and Nowra in their informative
introduction.
By assembling the work of 37 authors they have produced a book that is diverse and fascinating. Each piece is placed into the decade in which it was set and thus the reader’s imagination is transported to another time. Memoir, poetry and fiction stand alongside and support one another, creating pain and desire, tragedy and delight, emotions as contradictory as Kings Cross itself.
An excerpt from Patrick White’s Voss opens the collection and evokes a tension and yearning for open hearted connection which is evident throughout the whole book. These are stories of outsiders who are searching for a fulfilment which Kings Cross seems to offer; or maybe it is shelter from the intolerance of larger society and acceptance of difference that they seek.
Other authors include Kenneth Slessor, to whom the book is dedicated, Dulcie Deamer, Sumner Locke Elliott, Roberta Sykes and Gabrielle Lord.
IN THE GUTTER...LOOKING AT THE STARS is an effective showcase for Australian writing, for while its focus is the Cross, it whets my appetite for other work by these authors. Another effect of this book is to remind me that each of the faces I pass in the street has a story of its own.
Fifteen years after moving here I still take pleasure in saying that I live in the Cross and I take pleasure in recommending this book.