Readers’ Comments
Please feel free to send a comment (200 words maximum) via the Contact page. It might be a response to one of Charmian Clift’s essays, or to her work as a whole. Or you might like to send a greeting to mark the Centenary of her birth. This is not a blog — your comments won’t go up here live. But they will be copied and pasted in. You can also send an image.
Elizabeth Creed
A tatty poster in a shop window showed white flat-roofed houses above the word ‘Greece’ with the blue Mediterranean in the background. As a five-year-old, I announced, “I’m going there one day”. As a seven-year-old, I had learned to read well before Charmian Clift’s work began to appear in the 'Melbourne Herald' in 1964. By reading aloud Charmian’s observations on life to my mother (who corrected my pronunciation and answered my questions), my vocabulary was expanded well beyond that contained in a primary school reader. Charmian’s writing also expanded my ideas well beyond a suburban Australian childhood, especially the idea in ‘On Being A Culture Vulture’ of going away to measure yourself against the European ‘kitchen door’ and perhaps being surprised that you were taller – and more capable – than you thought. Between 1981 and 1993, I measured myself against a variety of Greek kitchen doors, often within sight of a volume of Charmian’s work on a makeshift bookshelf of bricks and planks. Thank you, Charmian, for influencing my life with your words and your ideas in ways that you could never have imagined. .
Peggy Knott
What a wonderful wealth of reading experiences Charmian has given the world. May her 100 th year allow new generations to appreciate the beauty of her language and her perceptions of her world. They remain as remarkably relevant now as then. .
Ross Miller
Thank you for your genius and inspired writing, for your honesty and insight, for being my muse for half a century. We will always swim in your ink. Happy centenary, Charmian!
Charmian Clift led me to optimism, to find comfort in independence, to wonder, to endure, to travel, to even settle by the sea. An unmet but a remarkable influence, not a myth to me. .
Ruth Lawrence, re Peel me a Lotus
It's absolutely incredible to think it is Charmian's Centenary, so ahead of her time yet so misunderstood in her time.
My brother gave me an original copy of Peel Me A Lotus many years ago and after he died I finally read it and loved it. He was a journalist at the time and I was writing about living on an Island in New Guinea and he suggested that Clift was the best writer for that type of genre. In 2015 my husband and I visited Hydra and loved it and I think she is still diving off those rocks and swimming in the aqua sea.
Isobel Firth, re Sneaky Little Revolutions
I wanted to let you know how very much I’m enjoying these essays. Last Monday I spent over six hours being attended to at the local hospital in the emergency department after falling down drunk and fracturing my shoulder. Luckily I had bought the book the week before but extra luckily I was alert enough to pick it up before being taken to the hospital. It was the perfect book to keep my mind off waiting for so long in the public waiting room. I kept making little exclamations of delight e.g. p190 “all the wayers” and “none of the wayers” — I was in Canberra in 1966 when LBJ visited and was one of the anti-Vietnam “none of the wayers”. So thanks so very much for the book-and all the staff who attended to me have been made aware of how very readable and thoroughly enjoyable it is.
Julian Neylan, re Clift’s essays
Clift’s 230-odd essays strike me as having that rare knack of making you feel like she’s telling a compelling story across the kitchen table. They rival the best of Australian literature, such elegant evocations from a silky style of prose. The impact she must have had on her readers of the 1960s surely shaped their opinions and convictions. There are many ways to bring about social change. Clift’s method was to engage through conversation, chipping away at the knowledge and prejudices of alternative views without causing alienation. In this she was superb, a quiet, unassuming yet radical voice for justice. Her weekly readership was the combined audience of Australia’s two largest metropolitan dailies, for over 200 weeks. Though her column appeared in the women’s pages, even at half readership she would have commanded a reach that most writers would die for, including her award-winning husband. This made her the most effective sort of radical, one with a large, captive audience and the power of persuasion. An iron fist striking with silken pen, week after week. Many of the causes she championed are just as relevant today.