Written as a dark, comic fable, the story concerns an advertising executive, Harry Joy, who briefly ‘dies’ of a heart attack. On being resuscitated, he realizes that the life he has previously drifted amiably through is in fact Hell – literally so to Harry. His wife is unfaithful, while his son is selling drugs, and his daughter is a communist selling herself to buy them. In one of the novel’s more shocking scenes, glimpsed through a window, incest occurs.
Redemption comes in the form of Honey Barbara – a pantheist, healer and prostitute. In the words of the book’s blurb “Honey is to Harry as Isis is to Osiris. Together they conquer Hell and retire to the forest where their children inherit the legend of paradise regained.” But Harry must die for a second time to be truly saved.
I remember reading Bliss a long time ago. However, it was interesting to return to it. Although a different novel, there was something about the capturing of place that reminded me of Murray Bail’s Eucalyptus. I was also intrigued with the way in which Bliss can be considered a story about stories. That is, stories about identity, about advertisements, about nationalism, about myth, about the said and unsaid.
Highlights
He did other American things (for he was an American), like insisting on iced water at table and then drinking spirits throughout the meal, which was noticed by everybody and not always approved of. The town had an ambivalent attitude towards Americans, envying their power and wishing to reject it and embrace it all at once. In business you could never be sure whether it was an asset or a liability to be an American.
Bettina did not give up her dreams so easily. She spoke of New York to no one. She secretly married it to another dream, rolled the two together, harboured them within her and let them grow. She cultivated Americans and read their magazines. She saved money and put it in a special account. She did exercises to preserve her body for that time of arrival.
‘There are three sorts of people in Hell. Captives, like us. Actors. And Those in Charge. What do you think?’
‘Who are the Actors?’
‘Most of them. They work for Those in Charge.’
‘To persecute the Captives?’
‘Yes.’
‘They’re Actors; acting; not what they seem.’
‘Mmmm. What do you think?’
While she waited she became more American than the Americans. She supported their wars, saw their movies, bought their products, despised their enemies. Even their most trivial habits were adopted as articles of faith and there was always iced water on the table at Palm Avenue.
‘It is an epidemic,’ Adrian Clunes said angrily. ‘And wait. You wait for another five years. This,’ he tapped the paper, ‘is what we get for how we live. And believe me, it is just hotting up.’
Walking was the best thing when you hurt. It was better than dope and better than eating. It was better than fucking and better than sleeping. You just emptied your mind of everything so that the inside of your head was like an empty terracotta jar and no matter what happened you kept it empty. You guarded its emptiness with your eyes and your ears and you did not even stop to consider where you were going. In this way you always arrived at the right place.
‘You think you’re a real smart dude,’ Ken said to David, ‘but those coppers aren’t dumb. They’ll know you knocked off that ticket.’
Note: Harry Joy or Mr Joy, David Joy travelling as Bettina. Examples of fluid identity.
He was merely sewing together the bright patchworks of lives, legends, myths, beliefs, hearsay into a splendid cloak that gave a richer glow to all their lives. He knew when it was right to tell one story and not another. He knew how a story could give strength or hope. He knew stories, important stories, so sad he could hardly tell them for weeping.
And also he gave value to a story so that it was something of worth, as important, in its way, as a strong house or a good dam. He insisted that the story was not his, and not theirs either. You must give something, he told the children, a sapphire or blue bread made from cedar ash. And what began as a game ended as a ritual.
At work, we have been winding up the testing associated with the upgrade. This included discovering that we had been referencing the wrong documentation and…