Peter FitzSimons

I'll begin this by saying I'm a fan of Peter FitzSimon's work. I've enjoyed many of his other titles.

But not this one. In fact, I stopped reading it about 2/3 the way through. That's rare for me. I usually push-on regardless.

The main subject of the book - Breaker Morant - is part of Australian folklore. A movie of the same name typifies Australian sentiment against the British 'mother country', and harks to our feelings of being used and thrown to the dogs by Britain in both world wars.

But this Breaker Morant - the one the author paints - is not what I expected. He's a theiving, selfish, self-centered, narcissistic, woman-ising, drunken, con-artist. And that's just his good points. It got to a point in the book where I just so disliked him I didn't care whether he was executed, or even whether that was 'just'. I got the impression the author grew to dislike him, too, and I think this came out in his writing.

Large swathes of the book are about the setting - the Boer war between Britain and South African republics in what is now South Africa over a century ago. My god, if ever there was history made to 'end all wars' (at that time, anyway) it would be this waste of time, money and many, many lives. Both sides were disgusting. The lowest of human base behaviour on display. And while the author paints the heroics of the Australian soldiers involved, he also details their atrocities. Truly shameful.

FitzSimon employs a unique style which combines story-telling, fiction, non-fiction, auto-biography, commentary, and narration. He would drive any traditional editor to madness I'd reckon. It's an odd mix, but I'm used to it from his other books. In this book, though, the prose became awkward and stilted in parts, and sometimes plain infuriating. Who's talking? What's happening here? The reader should not be spending time working that out. And in some chapters I was reading unnecessary detail that just didn't seem to matter. So what if the researchers found it ... why do I need to read it?

Definitely not my favourite FitzSimon's title. And I suspect it's not his, either.
… (meer)

Slow down. Take a deep breath.

That's what I constantly felt like telling PeterFitzSimons as I went through this book. It all feels so rushed.

Of course, Les Darcy was rushed himself. A child of a large Catholic family in Australia, he started boxing serious at age fifteen, was probably the best in Australia within five years, by 1916 was looking for a way to get to America to fight even though World War I was raging, managed to get there by sneaking out of Australia on a freight-carrier, couldn't manage to arrange a fight in America, and died of disease in Memphis in May 1917.

Before he died, his patriotism was questioned, because he didn't volunteer for the Australian army -- but after his death, he became an Australian hero. There were several books, and at least a couple of songs, including one that made it pretty firmly into Australian tradition ("In Maitland cemet'ry Lies poor Les Darcy"). It was the song that got me interested -- I assure you I am not interested in boxing!

Darcy's early death raised two questions: What did he die of (he was only about 22, after all!), and just how good was he? The Darcy song claims the Americans poisoned him because he was too good and would beat anyone he faced. In fact, he seems to have died of pneumonia and sepsis, which came about because of an injury he took in a bout before he flew to Australia. And we really don't know how good he was, because he had few opportunities to fight the world's best boxers -- but the fact that he occasionally had trouble with lesser mortals makes it unlikely that he was in fact the world's best.

This book doesn't go to the extremes of the folk songs (e.g. it accepts the American death certificate), but it's always pumping up Les, the friendly, guileless kid who just wanted to beat the stuffing out of people. (And marry his girlfriend Winnie O'Sullivan, even though they were both very young.) The picture it paints is, frankly, of a rather foolish young man with fast fists. Is that right? Once again, I don't know, because it's all so breathless.

I don't know if a true biography of Darcy can be written at this date. Everyone who knew him is dead, and most of those who wrote things about him were Darcy fans; it's hard to find balance. This seems like a panegyric. (At least it's a readable one.) But it also left me constantly wanting to shake sense into Darcy. A very peculiar mix -- but at least better than the folk songs.… (meer)