The Wonderful Library of P. P. McGuiness

“What did I say to writers and film-makers when they asked me for advice? I told them about the “theory of sincerity” and of the necessity for working to deepen their artistic individuality, no matter whether society needed it or not.” — Isaac Babel, in a written confession to the Soviet authorities, from The KGB’s Literary Archive.

At the moment, I am reading a fantastic book called No Fixed Address: The Story of Australia’s Trailblazing Aboriginal Rock ‘n’ Reggae Band by Donald Robertson. It’s about a famous Aboriginal band in Australia, who were also in a great film called Wrong Side of the Road that came out in 1981. One of the reasons I like this book, besides learning about the band, is that a lot of their stories take place in the 80s, and though I was a little kid at the time, there are many things that I recognise from the cultural landscape of Sydney, artwork I would see on walls, when my mum would take me into town for the Sydney Festival in January.

As I was reading it today, I suddenly thought how great books are, as I was feeling very emotional, reading about one band member, Ricky Harrison’s account of being discriminated against by a particular magistrate — but then he spoke of how another magistrate came along, who was empathetic with Aboriginal people, and who had treated him well; and what I was thinking is that books can capture experiences and ideas that you cannot possibly fathom on your own, by just your everyday observations. They capture a kind of personal truth that makes you the richer for having learnt about it — and then I suddenly envisioned having a great library of books of my own — and it then triggered a memory of the wonderful library of P. P. McGuinness.

When I was about twenty, newspapers were still in existence and a pretty standard way of getting a snapshot of what was happening in the world. As I would travel into town on the train to a library course I was doing at the time, I would often be reading a copy of the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper, having bought it before jumping on the train. And one of the columnists that I remember enjoying reading was a stern looking guy with a beard and glasses named P. P. McGuinness. He was often sharing his political opinions, which was something I knew little about, and so I felt a bit smarter for having learnt something from him about what was going on in Australia.

A year or so later, a good friend who shares the same surname, birth-date, and mother’s name as me gave me a book called Sex and Anarchy: The Life and Death of the Sydney Push, about a group of intellectuals and artists known as ‘The Push’ who mostly met through being students at Sydney Uni during the 1950s, but went on to become influential in different areas, people like art critic Robert Hughes, trailblazing feminist Germaine Greer and legendary music writer Lillian Roxon. My friend knew that I liked the American beat writers, and must’ve thought I’d enjoy this. Well, he was right!

One of the things that jumped out at me was that there a very young guy, an aspiring writer and huge fan of science-fiction stories, who would also hang around these older intellectuals, whose name was Padraic McGuinness.

Was this the same gruff-looking columnist I now read on the train? There was about forty years between then and now, but it definitely was him; and to me, this was the first time I think I had a sense of the fact that young aspirations do not always coincide with future outcomes. He wanted to be a science-fiction writer, but he was now writing political columns. They seemed to me not to be connected. But also, in the book, something terrible had happened to him; a girl he loved had died in a tragic accident. This stuck with me, as much as anything else in the book.

I read that book many times in my early twenties; and then at about twenty-four, I got a girlfriend of my own, and my whole life changed for the better. The same friend who had given me the book, had told me something along those lines, to do with loving someone: “Just wait for it – you’ll know what I mean.”

So, along I went for a number of years, getting a job in a library, and working as a ‘copy cataloguer’ — which basically means fixing up the electronic records of books so that people can find them properly in the online catalogue. It was not the most exciting job, but I still enjoyed it, getting to be around books, and look at the inside workings of a university library.

My partner and I had a mix of good and bad times, many of the bad times were related to me, and we also had a few family losses that affected both of us in our late twenties. We moved to another state, but that didn’t fix things, the way I had unrealistically thought they would. We eventually broke up, and I had a breakdown.

After moving back to Sydney, I was in a weird fog for a couple of years. I didn’t really know what the hell to do, or how to move forward. In my thoughts, I was still stuck on everything that had happened; but I was also fumbling with work, unable to find a job that I was happy in.

But often when you are in a bad state of mind, there are little things that also happen to you that are positive — even if you can’t really see it at the time. And they are sometimes connected to other threads running through your life, that you do not notice, and have no control over. One of those was being invited to the launch of a magazine called Critical Drinkers. Somehow, it was connected to P. P. McGuiness, who had passed away a few months before — and to be honest, I can’t even remember how I found out about it.

But when I went along, it was at a house in Rozelle, the inner-city of Sydney, full of Victorian-era terraces and workman’s cottages, having once been a working class area, close to the shipyards of Sydney harbour. In the adjacent suburb of Balmain, there was almost one pub for every three blocks of houses. I walked past the big wooden gate of the house a number of times, too afraid to go in, as I had socialized so little with any strangers since coming back to Sydney. I think after about the third time of going past the door, I pushed it open and went in.

It was still daylight, late afternoon sun, and despite it being an old terrace house, it looked very modern. All of the inside of the house had been done up, and looked great! At the back of the small yard, there was a big two story building, separate from the main house, and big enough to be a barn rather than a garage full of tools. Straight away, Parnell, the editor of the magazine got me a drink, and introduced me to the other guests, who were a mixture of academics, journalists, and others involved in politics; many of them had contributed an article to the magazine.

The alcohol flowed and it quickly turned into night, and I found myself having a very good time, chatting to all these new people who were roughly around my age. I barely noticed that I was no longer thinking about any of my problems. And the more I stayed, the more I learnt about the magazine and the people. The editor Parnell was the daughter of P. P. McGuinness! Towards the end of the night, she asked me if I would like to see her Dad’s library and buy any of his books, as she was trying to shrink it down.

Of course I did! But how big could it be?

Parnell showed me down to the garage at the back where guests had been going in and out of all night. I went up a set of stairs to the second floor — and then was astounded by what I saw. The whole floor was full of books. For some reason, the memory I have now is of a modern looking room like an indoor swimming pool at night, with the lights off, and the only source of light coming in through a high window from the party in the backyard. But why would the lights have been off? It’s a faulty memory, maybe!

But along all of the walls in the room were running bookshelves like a proper library — and down the middle there was also a row of bookshelves facing both ways. There must’ve been about 20 000 books in the whole room! The home library was incredible, and I’ve never seen anything like it since.

I went browsing through all the shelves — and I think I found about 4 books that I took out, and came back to the main house with, and gave to Parnell. I had a science fiction book, a book on American history, and The Unknown Poe, an anthology of the writings of Edgar Allan Poe, published by City Lights Bookstore, which was a famous bookshop that published beat writers like Allen Ginsberg back in the fifties. And there was one more book that I can’t remember now, as I gave it later to that friend who had given me the Sex & Anarchy book, the friend with the same surname, birth-date and mother’s name as me.

The Poe book has become one of my favourites that I often quote from, as it is not only some of the more off-beat writing of horror-mystery writer Edgar Allan Poe, but it also has a section of French writers appraising his work, like Charles Baudelaire who was a massive fan! I started reading it on the way home, catching the night-ride bus back to where I lived in the western suburbs.

One other thing about the party, that I haven’t mentioned, as it’s not really related much to libraries, but there was also a girl who I met and talked to and liked. I went bushwalking with her about a month later. And though nothing came of it, it was still a little glimmer of hope for the future.

As a final thing for this story, I wanted to include another quote from The KGB’S Literary Archive by Vitaly Shentalinsky, an exciting book that I read in my mid-twenties. Each chapter is about a specific writer who was tormented by the Soviet authorities early last century, and this next quote comes from a chapter on Father Pavel Florensky, a priest and pastor who is now described as the “Russian Leonardo da Vinci” because of his immense scientific knowledge and interest in engineering and inventing new things.

Back in the Soviet time, he had written a book called The Pillar and Ground of the Truth published in 1914. But by the late 1920s, he began to be persecuted by the OGPU (a forerunner of the KGB) for his religious convictions and association with a monastery that was regarded as being a ‘counter-revolutionary centre’ giving refuge to controversial figures (old aristocracy). He was sent to a Far Eastern concentration camp, and while there, wrote a letter to his wife, after she revealed to him that his personal library had been demolished by the authorities.

And this is what he wrote:

“All my life has been devoted to philosophical reflection and scientific research. I never took the time for a vacation for amusements or pleasures. Not only all my time and efforts but the greater part of my small earnings went on this service to mankind (spent buying books etc). My library was not simply a collection of books but a selection made according to already thought-out and well-defined subjects. One could say that my works were already half-written but preserved in the form of summaries of books to which only I knew the key . . . The work of my entire life has now been lost . . . The destruction of the results of my life’s work is much worse, for me, than my own death . . . “