Clean Straw For Nothing

Who is that girl with a very young Leonard Cohen?

Charmain Clift the wife of George Johnston, the author of the outstanding My Brother Jack (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1684579932) who is also the author of this sequel Clean Straw For Nothing.

Johnson writes that this is a work of fiction, “a free rendering of the truth”. That begs the question as to why his wife, a talented writer in her own right, took an overdose of barbiturates on the eve of the publication of this novel by her husband.

Her wiki quotes her as saying
‘I do believe that novelists must be free to write what they like, in any way they liked to write it (and after all who but myself had urged and nagged him into it?), but the stuff of which Clean Straw for Nothing is made is largely experience in which I, too, have shared and ... have felt differently because I am a different person ...'

Clean Straw For Nothing is the second novel of a trilogy that tells the story of David Meredith (Johnston) and his wife Cressida (Clift) from the time they became a couple after WW2 through to an ill Meredith (Johnston) lying in a Sydney Hospital bed in the late 60's after a return to Australia after many years' absence.

Meredith was a journalist of some repute who really wished to be an author of more repute. This at times very sad story tells of that attempt and with that the consequences to him and his wife's complex relationship, not only with each other but those that they come into contact with. Theirs is a story of displaced bewilderment, imposter syndrome and living outside the norms of respectable society, “jumping off the bus” as one protagonist acidly complained.

Meredith wanted to depart Australia desperately and with that had the support of Cressida who was a wanderer herself. They had witnessed the racism of Anglo Australians towards European refugees with much disgust, having witnessed war first hand. There was a feeling of not fitting into a staunchly conservative society that resented anyone different, for them there was a sense of displacement that they recognised in themselves. With that, they moved to London with children in tow. Working in London did not remove that sense of displacement, so they moved to a Greek Island. They were looked on by the locals with some bemusement, but this idyll was attractive to wandering expatriate kinds from all over the planet.

But the life of a writer can be burdensome if there is a lack of success, things can get difficult on the financial front and as to their own domesticity, Meredith an older husband and his beautiful young wife drank and partied too much, the consequences of that are a challenge. With illness eventually having an effect, after many years it is time to go home, the question of course is where is home?

Johnson has written a novel that joins its predecessor as very thematic; this one looks at the life of the outsiders who belonged neither in their homeland nor in the places that they escaped to. They were before their time in terms of dropping out, the fifties for goodness's sake? They had experiences that few of their contemporaries had hitherto experienced, but it all came at a great cost psychologically and was destructive for them both, and in real life, their children.

As author Polly Sampson wrote, Cohen “... was inspired by married writers George Johnston and Charmian Clift when he visited the Greek island of Hydra in 1960. But their golden age came at a price” Indeed.


Highly recommended to anyone that has read My Brother Jack and to anyone that has an interest of Hydra's “fabled colony”.