Book Club - Robert Skinner’s I’d Rather Not

Final Draft - Great Conversations

Robert Skinner is the author of I’d Rather Not. To delve much further into his biography would be risk spoilers for I’d Rather Not which reads something like the autobiography of someone you’d love to meet at a party, but definitely before the beer runs out.

Robert is also the founding editor of The Canary Press, Australia’s greatest and possibly only short story magazine. This accolade should serve as a recommendation for his prose and again also as something of a spoiler for the events of I’d Rather Not.

Now about here I’m forced to acknowledge that the lion's share of the enjoyment in I’d Rather Not come less from the series of mishaps and adventures in Skinner’s life and more from the deft and entertaining way he describes them.

Arriving in the city, running a literary magazine from a corridor, sleeping in a swag in a ditch; these are not inherently entertaining things (actually they do sound rather entertaining as long as they’re not happening to me) but flowing from the pen of Robert Skinner they are transformed into astute and often inscrutable insights into the human condition.

Beginning in the unemployment line and ending in the back of a police car, I’d Rather Not embodies the truism about the inherent value of the journey. Whether failing up or falling down we as readers are buckled in for the ride and I’d Rather Not seems determined to give us value for our ticket.

It’s about here in this bookclub/review that I’m beginning to realize the impossibility of the task before me. By trying to convince you in my own words of the value and enjoyment in reading Robert Skinner’s words I might as well be trying to describe the invisible man. Sure I can’t give you the general outline and realistically you need to just run headlong into it to get any sort of impression.

What I can describe is the pure pleasure I got from immersing myself in fun and thought provoking prose. Riding along as Robert discovers himself in the Melbourne literary scene or walking through the outback beside a camel it’s impossible not to think on life and how we live it.

I’m still trying to paint you that impossible picture, when in fact I should just be exposing you to a little piece of I’d Rather Not. So to finish of this book club I decided to open the text to a random page, confident that I’d find a delightful and bizarre observation that would set you on the path to reading I’d Rather Not.

Here’s Robert on his time editing the Canary Press:

“Somehow, without meaning to, and without really knowing that such a thing existed, we became part of the Melbourne Literary Scene. It was like running joyously along a beach and accidentally joining up with a triathlon. Suddenly you find yourself jostling for space, measuring your progress not against the beach but against the people around you.”

Go check out I’d Rather Not and discover the pleasure of reading for the sake of wonderful words!

Discover Robert at - https://www.mrrobertskinner.com/home