Non-fiction – paperback; Black Inc.; 176 pages; 2023.
When it was released last year, Robert Skinner’s autobiographical essay collection I’d Rather Not garnered much praise.
The great and the good of the Australian literary and journalistic set endorsed it, from journalist Annabel Crabb — who called it an “absolute bag of lollies” — to writer Anna Krien, who said:
“People will say he is Australia’s Sedaris, but he’s not. He’s Robert Skinner and he’s a bloody marvel.”
Thirteen essays
The book has 13 standalone chapters, many of which have previously been published in The Monthly (“in different forms”). Each one reads like a well-written and engaging magazine feature in which Skinner uses the techniques of fiction to tell stories about his unconventional life.
His reflections on the crazy moments that can make us (or break us) are dished up with levity and wisdom.
Reading them is a pleasurable experience because he knows how to craft a compelling narrative using jeopardy, self-deprecating humour and a deft turn of phrase. I had to ration out my reading, otherwise I would have gobbled this down in no time at all!
Here’s how the first essay — “War and Peace” — opens, setting the tone for the rest of the collection that follows:
I retired when I was twenty-eight years old, but ran out of money the same afternoon, so I caught a bus to the dole office. My feeling about unemployment was: Someone’s gotta do it. Why not me? The pay was lousy, but I’d heard the hours were good. (page 3)
Life in the margins
Skinner clearly rails against a conformist society, and most of the essays cover his struggle to find purpose and identity. Recurring themes include dead-end jobs, homelessness, corporate absurdity, disillusionment and existential angst.
But it’s not all serious. The book also includes some light-hearted essays, from what makes a great party (“The Perfect Host”) to the hilarity of going on a 10-day camel trek with your parents (“Lessons from Camels”).
There’s also a deliciously entertaining, if somewhat cynical, essay about Skinner’s experience as an outback tour guide (“The Art of Tour Guiding”) and a terrifyingly funny tale about taking a whole day to hitchhike 23km (“The Dying Art of Hitchhiking”) while trying not to get beaten up in the process.
Magazine life
My favourite chapter—”How to Make it in Business”— covers his time co-founding and editing the now-defunct short story magazine The Canary Press, a job that seems to have given him enormous satisfaction and frustration in equal measure.
I recognised some of the scenarios Skinner writes about because I spent about 15 years of my career putting weekly magazines to press. I can only imagine that his “processes” (if there were any) were a tad on the chaotic side:
Chloe, one of our editors, said that the closest she’s come to the experience of putting out an issue of the magazine — in the degree of stress and logistical mayhem — was being evicted from her house. We were trying to put out four issues a year. (page 50)
Skinner admits that being a technophobe — “I had never had an office job; I’d barely worked indoors before” (page 51) — did not help. I could feel the angst and turmoil and insane hilarity resonate off the page:
One night, trying to meet a print deadline, I was up late making last-minute typesetting changes. In InDesign, there is a shortcut — ‘shift + W’ — for toggling between full-screen and normal view. I was toggling away, and it was only when we got three thousand copies of the magazine back from the printers that I realised I had littered the text with capital Ws. (page 52)
Light relief
I’d Rather Not is a fun read, albeit with some serious undertones, and offers exactly the kind of light relief I was looking for after reading a steady diet of quite “important” novels.
It was shortlisted for the Small Publishers’ Adult Book of the Year at the 2024 Australian Book Industry Awards, and The Guardian named it one of the Best Australian Books of 2023.
It is available in the UK in both Kindle and paperback editions; in the US it has been published in both ebook and audio book format by Steerforth.
Reading Matters 