Readers may remember that I featured the author Delia Falconer and her new book of essays Signs and Wonders after the Melbourne Writers Festival was cancelled, alerting you to the book’s forthcoming release. What I didn’t know then was that Signs and Wonders is a stunning book, and it is is going to walk off the shelves when it’s released in October so if you don’t want to miss out, best to pre-order a copy now. I don’t like to promote FOMO but booksellers are already warning us about both shortages of Christmas stock and expected delivery delays due to pressure on Australia Post because of the explosion in online sales. Signs and Wonders is exactly the kind of book that’s a perfect Christmas present for the hard-to-please, so don’t be disappointed…
There are thirteen essays but it will come as no surprise that I opted to read ‘The Disappearing Paragraph’ first. This fascinating essay explores the impact on thinking of the way print has been altered in the age of screens. It begins like this:
A new breath. A macro-punctuation mark. A flash of lightning showing the landscape from a different aspect. A collection of sentences with a unity of purpose. A new neighbourhood made up of ‘streets’ of sentences. These are some of the ways writers have described the work of the paragraph. And yet, among the many unsettling phenomena of our age, I have noticed that paragraphs have been disappearing — at least paragraphs as I once knew them. This may not amount to much amid the greater unravelling of our world but it is a significant disturbance within my own small literary ecotone. (p.155)
Falconer learned to type as I did, on a typewriter, (though hers was electric, and the one at the State Film Centre where I worked, was not. ) But before that, as I did, she had absorbed the small visual rhythms of paragraphing by reading everything that came my way as a child. (For me, my grade 6 teacher Mrs Sheedy who was a stickler for writing conventions, reinforced the message with a red pen.) But now paragraphs are often not separated by the conventional indent, but by a double-line space. You see it here in this and all my reviews but it’s also emerging in books. When I inspect my current TBR of books for review, three of the seven use double-line spaces. The publishers aren’t consistent: Emily Bitto’s Wild Abandon (A&U) has double-line spaces but also from A&U, Nellie, the life and loves of Dame Nellie Melba by Robert Wainwright, doesn’t. Upswell publications The Dogs by John Hughes and Belinda Probert’s Imaginative Possession have double-line spaces, but Monique Truong’s The Sweetest Fruits has conventional indents. So does Transit Lounge’s The One that Got Away, Travelling in the Time of Covid by Ken Haley, as does The Dancer by Evelyn Juers from Giramondo. And even Delia’s own book isn’t consistent with itself: ‘Terror from the Air: Fire Diary 2019-20′ has double-line spaces, but ‘The Opposite of Glamour‘ has conventional indents. What’s going on?
Does it matter?
Mainz Psalter detail, 1457 Gutenberg
The conventional indent came into use with the printing press:
…printers developed the convention — as it has come down to us — of beginning paragraphs on a new line, leaving an indent space for illustrators to fill with an ornament or illuminated capital. When these embellishments were abandoned, the space remained: a little shelf for the eye and mind to get a purchase on, before the new paragraph began.
Falconer’s delicate sense of humour can be seen in her thoughts about the Victorian paragraph:
Perhaps no one loved paragraphs as much as the Victorians, who built their long, cadenced sentences into these substantial units of thought, which built in turn into chapters, so that when you look at the dense pages of their novels they seem to bear all the purpose and momentum of an empire. Their paragraphs were like their thick-legged chairs or large shiny jardinières; they furnished a book so that it felt comfortingly solid. (p.158)
And we who went to school in the 20th century enjoyed this inheritance, recognising paragraphs as ‘natural’ markers of the flows of thought.
The double-line space between paragraphs, Falconer tells us, creates a significant interruption in the longer flow of a section. So what’s happening when the brain registers a more liberal use of spacing, which puts a line of empty page between each paragraph? It’s one thing when it happens in poetry, but what about in novels? It was extravagant, expressive and irregular in 1976 when Michael Ondaatje used it in Coming Through Slaughter (the story of New Orleans cornet player Buddy Bolden), because it announced visually that these were glimpses as curated and partial as the photographer Belloq’s portraits of Storyville sex workers, which also feature in the novel.
Most thrilling of all, Ondaatje would sometimes even throw a single-line riff — like Bolden’s loud trumpet blasts as he went mad during a 1907 jazz parade — across the middle of a blank page. (p.162)
But now, says Falconer, and my sense is that she’s right, what was innovative has become routine. The double-line break is not unusual any more.
I’m seeing this shift to systematically placing double-line spaces between paragraphs so often in novels and essays now that it’s made me wonder: what if it’s crept up unnoticed in literary prose like the rise of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere? Or, to cast about for another metaphor, what if the old internal structures of writing we are used to are like a sea creature’s shell, giving shape to the soft creature inside them; and those inner partitions, under some unseen pressure akin to the rise of acids in seawater, have been quietly dissolving and rearranging themselves? Or what if — to take the more positive views — we’ve been evolving as readers to no longer require runs of indented paragraphs that thread themselves, one after another, into arguments or long sections? (p.163)
It’s hard to know what effect these text blocks have, but I’ve read some research by neuroscientists that shows different patterns of thought are emerging and, more worryingly, there are lower levels of comprehension of text on screen rather than in print. I don’t remember if they controlled for different layouts and arrangements of text, but I do remember that they concluded that young people reading on screen are less able to process longer pieces of text, as in, say, the Victorian novel or medical textbooks.
I’ve focussed on this one essay to give you some idea of the delights in store. Others that were utterly absorbing were ‘Coal: An Unnatural History’; ‘Terror from the Air: Fire Diary 2019-20’; ‘The Opposite of Glamour’; and ‘Good Neighbours’ which, in telling the story of the seal that made its home on the beach in an inner city suburb of Sydney, ranges far and wide as it traverses the controversy over how best to care for it. I was surprised by the hostility I felt toward local self-appointed wildlife experts and by their confidence that they knew what was best for this animal they were claiming as a neighbour, she writes, and I found myself nodding in agreement at I sometimes wonder if there are more ‘wild’ animals circulating in these multiplying shared videos than there are in the world off-screen.
I love the way these essays are a window into the thoughts of a wise and thoughtful person, and the links between literature and current natural environment issues is brilliant, as for instance when Falconer links the worldwide decline of oysters with John Steinbeck’s metaphor of the flatworm in Cannery Row. But Falconer is under no illusions about the power of the pen to change things.
The fact is that for every book concerned with the fate of the world, there are a hundred, a thousand, films and books and ‘lifestyle’ television programs, and advertisements, and magazines offering a parallel world of infinite abundance. In this parallel universe, time exists on a different scale. Nothing is permanent, not even ruin, because things can always be ‘made over’ — properties flipped, ugly ducklings zhoozhed, dream homes located somewhere. In glamour’s alternate reality, surfaces always gleam. Decisions are never moral, but only ever aesthetic. Nothing is unobtainable, if you can pay enough. Meanwhile, those who attain glamour are ‘winners’, above the ruck in their gilded sphere, while those who don’t are ‘losers’. In this compelling fantasy version of our planet, long-term catastrophic damage is invisible, hidden by perpetual motion and glossy fluidity.
Glamour, I think, may be our most powerful and fatal fiction, the one that kills us all. (p.143)
The only essays I haven’t read are ‘Coronavirus Time: Diary’ and ‘Covid Walking: Diary.’ Like everyone else in the entire world, I have my own experience of the pandemic, and when I read, I just don’t want to think about it at all. It’s my Time Out.
Image credit:
- Mainz Psalter: printed by Johann Fust and Peter Schoeffer – http://www.papress.com/thinkingwithtype/teachers/type_lecture/history_mainz_psalter.htm, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1519058
You can pre-order the book from Readings and other good bookstores. You can also register at Readings to hear Delia talk about Signs and Wonders, online. (I’ve already booked in.) A big bouquet to Readings for the wealth of online events they are supporting — don’t wait for Love Your Bookshop Day in October — you can show your thanks and support to them and other indie bookstores doing it tough in Lockdown by buying your books from them: support Australian indie booksellers!
Author: Delia Falconer
Title: Signs and Wonders, Dispatches from a time of beauty and loss
Publisher: Scribner (Simon and Schuster), 2021
ISBN: 9781760857820 (pbk., 290 pages
Source: review copy courtesy of Scribner
ANZ LitLovers LitBlog 
Interesting notion ‘glamour’ and how it’s been presented in modern times. Sir Walter Scott a great promoter of it but well today’s versions are very different.
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By: Fay Kennedy on September 21, 2021
at 12:59 pm
Indeed, yes. It’s like the word celebrity and branding, they have a different meaning now too.
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By: Lisa Hill on September 21, 2021
at 5:50 pm
This does sound good. I notice I don’t absorb as much from reading on screen as I do from a real book. Interesting it’s been studied.
We always had to indent paragraphs in school but it has gone by the wayside somewhat. Everything changes and is eventually forgotten as change takes over.
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By: TravellinPenguin on September 21, 2021
at 2:31 pm
I notice when I’m writing, that I feel prompted to start new paragraphs based on how the text looks, rather than Mrs Sheedy’s ‘rule of thumb’ which was that a new paragraph starts when there’s a new idea.
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By: Lisa Hill on September 21, 2021
at 5:51 pm
Should I admit I have never thought about why we had that indent at the start of a paragraph? Now I know! I used to type on an old manual typewriter and I’m trying to remember how we did the indent – could we set a tab back then?
This book does sound interesting, I’ll check out if the library here is ordering a copy, although we’re in a lock down here for some time.
Officially fully vaccinated today! Interesting comments on twitter on the fact that the protesters in your city today are not seen demonstrating about domestic violence, deaths in custody, climate change, or lack of social housing. But I digress.
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By: Sue on September 21, 2021
at 7:04 pm
If I remember correctly (but it might depend on the brand of typewriter) there was a tab key on the LHS and you could use it not only to indent text, but also to align columns. My first full time job was in the stock control menswear office in Myer’s and we used to report on sales in columns e.g. recording (going across the line), how many sales there were of the different sizes for each different design. The tab key on a computer keyboard does the same thing in a word document (but not necessarily in other applications.)
I think there was some way to adjust the number of spaces a tab key would jump on those typewriters, but I don’t think I ever learned how to do it. I didn’t learn typing at school, but in those days of full employment there was such a shortage of staff you only had to say that you were a quick learner and they would teach you on the job.
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By: Lisa Hill on September 21, 2021
at 8:07 pm
I actually learned to type at a proper “secretarial college” before I went nursing and I still can’t remember how we indented paragraphs! The more I think about it, I do seem to remember swinging back the right hand lever a couple of times to double space to a new paragraph and then hitting an indent key somehow.
The library here has this book on order, so I’ve put a reserve on it, thanks Lisa!
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By: Sue on September 22, 2021
at 2:07 pm
I wish I’d learned it at school, I make so many typos!
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By: Lisa Hill on September 22, 2021
at 5:44 pm
Wasn’t there a Tab Key you used to indent? That’s my recollection but I may be wrong.
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By: whisperinggums on September 22, 2021
at 8:50 pm
I think so too.
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By: Lisa Hill on September 22, 2021
at 10:52 pm
I love essays, so would love to read this. (I’ve read your post because even if I do read it, I don’t tend to apply my rule re not reading reviews in advance to books of essays and some other non-fiction.)
Fascinating discussion of paragraphs. I love the proper use of paragraphs in writing. Mr Gums noted just yesterday that in something he read the first sentence of each paragraph clearly denoted what that paragraph was about.
It’s interesting though that when I do Trove editing, I notice that newspapers, particularly only one, seemed to ignore the paragraph in the sense that every sentence is a paragraph.
I’ve also noticed that in my blog, I sometimes break into two paragraphs writing that in a formal essay I’d probably leave as one – because white space tends to encourage people to read more.
I have come to prefer the use of double line space over the indent to denote a new paragraph. It looks clean to me. I love your survey though of different books from the same publisher. Clearly they don’t have a house style? I wonder if it is different book designers, or a sense of suting different content or different audiences? I wonder if Terri-Ann White will comment!
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By: whisperinggums on September 21, 2021
at 8:10 pm
suiting! NOT suting.
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By: whisperinggums on September 21, 2021
at 8:11 pm
I can get by without the indent, but for me, the sentence as paragraph tends to be a cue that the writing will be unsatisfactory. The whole idea of a paragraph is that it’s a coherently packaged development of an idea. The idea is stated in the first sentence, and the rest of the paragraph develops it. A single sentence conveys that this is it, there is no nuance, there is no treatment of alternative views. I’m not usually happy with that.
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By: Lisa Hill on September 21, 2021
at 8:24 pm
Yes I agree re paragraphs … did I say something that suggested I didn’t, or are you just reaffirming what you like?
Anyhow, given that we agree, I will say that the one sentence paragraph, used by a good writer who uses paragraphs the way we believe they should be used, can have a big impact because it is pretty clear that that writer really wants us to take note of that idea.
In my third paragraph, above, I said “only one”. Autocorrect again. I meant “earlier ones”, like newspapers from the 1930s. Have you ever noticed that?
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By: whisperinggums on September 21, 2021
at 8:50 pm
I can’t say that I know too much about newspapers from the 1930s!
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By: Lisa Hill on September 21, 2021
at 9:00 pm
PS I’m different to you. When I experience something – like COVID – I want to read everyone else’s experiences too! So, I will gravitate to books that deal with COVID.
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By: whisperinggums on September 21, 2021
at 8:12 pm
LOL Sue, if you had been in Melbourne last year where every media organisation regaled us with other people’s experiences day by day ad nauseam, nearly all of them variations on whinging about something or other, you’d be well and truly over Covid-themed writing too.
My stats went through the roof last year, and I reckon it’s because people welcomed having something else to read.
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By: Lisa Hill on September 21, 2021
at 8:27 pm
I take your point, but I guess I’m not talking about that sort of writing? Essays, novels or “literary nonfiction” from well-regarded writers on the subject and I’m there.
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By: whisperinggums on September 21, 2021
at 8:40 pm
Sorry, Sue, I’m still not interested in any of it. I pay close attention to the science via The Conversation, and I’m a Patreon of a twitter account that analyses data intelligently, and of course I listen nicely to friends and family, but the rest of it, nope, I pass on all of it.
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By: Lisa Hill on September 21, 2021
at 9:04 pm
Sorry, I was too brief above. I do understand what you are saying about being inundated with COVID all the time, particularly given all the lockdowns you’ve experienced, and not wanting to confront more. I am just weird, I know. I can cope with things many people can’t, but then there are things others like which distress me intensely.
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By: whisperinggums on September 21, 2021
at 9:00 pm
Well, we’re all different, and viva la difference!
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By: Lisa Hill on September 21, 2021
at 9:19 pm
Absolutely! And we can talk respectfully about our differences, can’t we?
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By: whisperinggums on September 21, 2021
at 9:43 pm
PPS I forgot to add that I learnt to type on a non-electric too. My Mum, a steno-typist taught me. I eventually got my own portable of which I was very proud, for years! Mr Gums’ mother taught him to type too, but he went an extra level and also learnt shorthand from her!
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By: whisperinggums on September 21, 2021
at 10:37 pm
I did shorthand too Sue, but I never used it! I can still do entire sentences in shorthand which shows how ingrained it was – but we retain things better when we’re young don’t we! What is terrifying is that I remember a time when documents were typed with carbon copies, and photocopiers didn’t exist! Yikes!
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By: Sue on September 22, 2021
at 7:04 pm
Haha, yes, Sue, I remember those times too, though photocopiers were around as well. Horrible things. Mr Gums doesn’t think he can do much shorthand now.
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By: whisperinggums on September 22, 2021
at 8:31 pm
Loved the review Lisa, and I have always loved Delia Falconer’s writing, so I broke off half-way through this reading to ring my bookseller and order the book! I also really love fine essays and there haven’t been that many of them of late.And as to paragraphs, well I love those too – good ones that do their job. So I love everything here! I still like and use the indent, but I’m open to progress I suppose and might possibly change in time.
I remember an English teacher at school telling me that: a paragraph is a story composed of sentences, with a beginning a middle and end. A chapter is a story composed of paragraphs, with a beginning, a middle and end. A book or an article or an essay, is a story composed of chapters with a beginning, a middle and end.
Very prescriptive and obviously not to be taken to extremes but I still find myself as both a writer and a reader, wanting to see paragraphs that express a clear thought or idea and that have an opening and closing sentence that contains it cogently.
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By: Jan Dickinson on September 23, 2021
at 11:35 am
I do miss the annual Best Australian Essays. I’ve had a few essay collections come my way this year, but TBH, most of them have failed to capture my interest. The Best Australian Essays featured a whole lot of authors on a whole lot of different topics which was why I liked them..
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By: Lisa Hill on September 23, 2021
at 12:18 pm
I’m not going to read a book of essays and I can’t even say why. Perhaps I’m just envious of people who express themselves better than I do. I don’t remember any formal training in grammar at school, probably wasn’t paying attention, but certainly I had none of those rules that seem to come out of learning Latin. As for typing, when I got a journalism cadetship I asked a (girl) friend to show me where to put my fingers on the keyboard and have more or less done so ever since. The guys in the teletype room sending stories to all the country dailies would type with two fingers at amazing speed. Did we indent paragraphs, probably, by one Tab, but I don’t remember for sure.
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By: wadholloway on September 23, 2021
at 5:58 pm
Hmm, I rather think you would like this, especially the essay on coal!
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By: Lisa Hill on September 23, 2021
at 6:58 pm
[…] Signs and Wonders, by Delia Falconer […]
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By: Non Fiction November – My Year in Non Fiction | ANZ LitLovers LitBlog on November 2, 2021
at 9:01 am
[…] Delia Falconer’s Signs and wonders (essays): “both solace and alarm as she renders the impact of living in the anthropocene” (Anna Funder); “exquisite writing that swerves with heartbreaking facts, into hidden realms of our broken world, luminous with humanity” (Robert Adamson); “illuminating book on the climate crisis ” (Brenda Walker); “captures the fragility and incredulity of living at a tipping point of earthly life” (Tom Griffiths) (Lisa’s review) […]
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By: Monday musings on Australian literature: Favourite books 2021, Part 2: Nonfiction and Poetry | Whispering Gums on December 20, 2021
at 11:00 pm
[…] Signs and Wonders, by Delia Falconer […]
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By: 2021 ANZLitLovers Australian and New Zealand Best Books of the Year | ANZ LitLovers LitBlog on January 1, 2022
at 5:37 pm