AustLit

'Joe passed the typescript across. There was nothing said. No ‘look on these words’, no ‘as when the sun breaks through the weltering clouds and pricks out characters of rare device’. Nothing but his blank expression, the expression he used when attempting lack of expression. ‘Just be yourself,’ I told him. ‘That look gives it away, don’t try, just act like you write, totally expressionless.’ It made no difference. Somewhere, could it have been by correspondence course, he had learnt his expression degree zero, of how to achieve power over others, and he would never surrender it. That, you might think, boded well for the rest of us. A warning sign. But he used it so widely that what it warned could not be deduced. It did not necessarily indicate malice. It might be an attempt to conceal joy. Or desire. Envy. Despair. Anything but detachment or disinterest.' (Introduction)