In this series of slim hardback books, an author is asked to write about another author that has inspired and fascinated them. In this edition of Writers on Writers (Black Inc Publishing 2017), Erik Jensen (founding editor of The Saturday Paper) introduces us to the author, essayist and feminist Kate Jennings.
The book is the size of a novella; the essay-like chapters are broken into chunky paragraphs that explore Jennings’ writing, particularly her novella Snake, and her work practice, but also provide some insight into her life, her family history and her thoughts about the craft of writing and the world of literature.
Erik Jensen is a writer of clarity, brevity, perceptiveness and accessibility. His account of Jennings is punctuated by pithy recollections of meetings between them over the years, of some small comment she made that struck him as interesting. His writing is alive with truisms that are startling, sometimes causing me to gasp with recognition – either in response to Kate Jennings’ words, or else in response to his interpretation of them. Much as he did in his article on Helen Garner in the recent issue of The Monthly, he seems able to collect a vast store of random chats and occasional meetings, to gather opinion and gossip, to add factual research through correspondence and official documents, and to somehow parse the whole into a bright, sharp and meaningful character sketch.
I sat with a good coffee and devoured this book in one sitting. Kate Jennings’ work Snake contains many autobiographical elements of her early life, and Jensen’s book about her interweaves her fiction with her essays with her memoir with actual moments from her life. The whole comes together in an enlightening bio delivered in simple, easy to read language, which is distinguished by intermittent and rather special flashes of penetrating emotional acuity that occur when Jensen adds together the sum of the parts to reveal a concentrated whole.
Writers on Writers: Erik Jensen on Kate Jennings
