{"product_id":"2940013684874","title":"Ten Creeks Run","description":"These people never were, and the incidents here recorded could not\u003cbr\u003etherefore have happened to them. They remain more vivid than reality\u003cbr\u003ebecause of imagination. I ramp impatiently, desirous of progressing to\u003cbr\u003eother scenes and souls, but, demonstrating the full scale of human\u003cbr\u003eemotions, they crowd about me suffocatingly, craving--nay,\u003cbr\u003edemanding--perpetuation. I am faced by a patternless, trackless region\u003cbr\u003eout of which I must urgently beat my way like the early explorers,\u003cbr\u003euncertain if I am merely going round and round, or right through, or\u003cbr\u003eslipping out the side by a false route.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"You poor old nonentities,\" I exclaim in the irritation of fatigue and\u003cbr\u003eclose confinement to their affairs. \"What profit in agitating the\u003cbr\u003eprinting-presses on your behalf! You are not among those who have\u003cbr\u003econtributed ideas to human knowledge, nor have you taken the human race\u003cbr\u003eone flicker above the mud on that road to super-humanhood for which some\u003cbr\u003eof us gape.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Bah!\" they retort. \"That stuff's all tommy rot! No matter what airs of\u003cbr\u003espiritual or mental superiority people give themselves, it's all a bottle\u003cbr\u003eof smoke in the end, and the end is before you can bally well get your\u003cbr\u003epipe to draw decently. They will all lie down and die and rot like the\u003cbr\u003ecows and horses, and, in spite of all the faith and belief, no one knows\u003cbr\u003efor a dead cert if they have any more soul, or as much as old 'Flea\u003cbr\u003eCreek', who carried the salt-bags out on the Run because the other horses\u003cbr\u003ewere too flash for the job.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"That's all very well,\" I contend, \"but it does not solve the problem of\u003cbr\u003eyour inconsequence as material from which to concoct a story. Whatever\u003cbr\u003ehappened to you but that you were born in your turn, grew up in your\u003cbr\u003eturn, were smitten with the procreative urge or scourge--sometimes out of\u003cbr\u003eyour turn--and tried to marry women who seldom wanted you; whereupon you\u003cbr\u003eturned to those more obliging, and who served equally well; whereupon you\u003cbr\u003ereproduced your species without male restraint or mercy to the limit of\u003cbr\u003efemale capacity and endurance; and the reproductions like yourselves\u003cbr\u003emostly, were not worth the women's birth-pangs, nor the women worth any\u003cbr\u003eother sort of pangs. Then in due time you were buried, and ordinary\u003cbr\u003efunerals are as monotonously alike as infants. One generation of you was\u003cbr\u003ebut a repetition of a former, with a marriage or a funeral as a\u003cbr\u003ehighlight--not a single epic adventure to create a hero, nor a hero to\u003cbr\u003eengineer an epic adventure in the whole boiling!\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Hold hard!\" says one old philosopher, who has thought much in the\u003cbr\u003esolitudes. I see him on the outer edge of the crowd. \"Is it real life\u003cbr\u003ehere in this part of the world you're driven to make this blanky book\u003cbr\u003eabout, or is it about some strange, unusual, far-away land, with kings\u003cbr\u003eand savages, or professors and millionaires, and other kinds of fantastic\u003cbr\u003epeople?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"It has to be set bang here in Australia, with none but you kicking up\u003cbr\u003eyour heels and using bad language in the middle of the natural scenery.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Well, then, it seems to me that all you have to do is yarn along and\u003cbr\u003emake us come alive just as we blooming well were. Let us drivel and\u003cbr\u003emeander like life itself. You have nothing to do with the way of our\u003cbr\u003elives or the character of our performances, whether big or little, or\u003cbr\u003edull, or exciting. If a funeral, or a marriage, or a drought, or a flood,\u003cbr\u003eor a snake-bite, or a spree, or a broken leg was our greatest experience,\u003cbr\u003ethat is not your responsibility. Blow it all, you're not the Lord\u003cbr\u003eHimself! You have only to show how things were without any squirming\u003cbr\u003eabout the why or how. You don't need to swell your head with shaping\u003cbr\u003edestiny or interpreting life according to those new-fangled blokes who\u003cbr\u003enever baked a damper, or felled a tree, or rode a buck-jumper, or killed\u003cbr\u003ea snake or a beast, or tanned a hide, or broke in a team of bullocks, or\u003cbr\u003eknocked up a coffin for a mate out of stringybark, or drank water out of\u003cbr\u003etheir hats. You just set us down on paper as we were, without any of your\u003cbr\u003eown shenannakin!\"","brand":"WDS Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47070243127536,"sku":"2940013684874","price":0.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940013684874_p0.jpg?v=1763583938","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940013684874","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}