Editorial

The Cupboard

A few weeks after I took up the editorship of Meanjin, based in our new home at Melbourne University Publishing, I went back to the Meanjin office at 131 Barry Street. The journal was based there from 1999 until February this year. It was a melancholy visit in some ways—without my predecessor Ian Britain inhabiting the space; with files left in piles to be sorted through; and letterheads of Meanjin’s past piled up around the place waiting for the recycling. I was poking around the offices, not sure what to do next, when I opened a cupboard under the stairs. That is when I saw them: sixty-eight years of Meanjins lined up in rows—almost every issue that has been published since Clem Christesen began the journal in 1940. It is hard to describe how exciting it is to find a cupboard full of such extraordinary history and to know you are, for a while at least, responsible for the future of the cupboard and everything inside it. I felt I was opening a door on the history of Australian book design and of Australian literature. It is this heritage I want to protect at the same time as taking Meanjin into the future.

We are in a phase of Australia’s cultural life where commercial pressures are intensifying, the online space is dynamic, and both are modifying organisations as various as television stations, universities, newspapers, theatres and publishing houses—which is why I believe that it is precisely now that something as determinedly refined as a literary journal has even more potential. In upcoming Meanjins expect more of an interaction between words and text. Expect to laugh. Expect writers you haven’t heard of before and to read established writers writing about unexpected things. And expect some things to stay the same. In the most literal sense this means I plan to reprint some articles from these early issues of the journal. I also share previous editors’ interest in history and memoir. Meanjin will continue to connect its readers to the myriad stories and experiences that, when read alongside each other, describe what it is to be Australian—and that description is, as it should be, in a constant state of flux. Some particulars: Meanjin will no longer be formally themed. There will be an essay by a book designer in each issue in which they tell us the story behind a particular book cover—or discusses the design process more generally. In this issue we publish Ampersand Duck, whose piece began life as a blog post. I will interview an author for each issue. For this issue I spoke to Luke Davies about his new novel, God of Speed, and on switching between genres. You’ll find the first extract of six, of Kate Fielding’s extraordinary graphic history, Their hooks find hold deep in our flesh, a history which has been illustrated by Mandy Ord, Clint Curé, Ben Fox and Elizabeth McDowell. I’m also keen to serialise a novel and readers should note that Caroline Lee’s wonderful piece, ‘The End’, is, in fact, the prologue of her novel, Stripped. In September we will publish the opening chapter of that novel. Whether I will get away with publishing a novel entire is yet to be established —for the author’s sake I hope it gets whipped away after only an extract or two, leaving readers to wait for the published novel. We’ll see.

You’ll notice that the June cover has moved towards a more illustrative look. This is a first step in a complete redesign using Premier Award Winning designers Chase & Galley. It was their bold approach to bringing together visual and textual elements that attracted me to their work and we hope to include more illustrations in the journal from September on. In September I will also introduce an ‘In Brief’ section to present current(ish) affairs, and shorter pieces of writing. In December we will begin a series of essays on Australian cultural institutions. There are other plans afoot, including developing more of an online presence, and digitising our archives. I’ll keep you posted.

I am Meanjin’s eighth editor. Those before me include Jim Davidson, Judith Brett, Jenny Lee, Christina Thompson, Stephanie Holt and Ian Britain, and I am indebted to them all. But while following in their footsteps is daunting, the footsteps that will take Meanjin forward are those laid down by Clem Christesen so many decades ago. He once said he wanted Meanjin to ‘make clear the connection between literature and politics’. So do I. Let’s see where those footsteps take us next.

Contents

Editorial

• The Cupboard by Sophie Cunningham

Essays

• Covering the Story by Ampersand Duck
  

• The Question of Decadence by Fiona McGregor
  

• Jane Austen’s Abandoned Romances by Laura Carroll
  

• Exorcism in the Driveway by Paul Mitchell

• Drugs, Dransfield, Women and Songs by Pip Proud (with David Nichols)

• The Last Jews in Harehills by Mark Dapin
  

• Their Hooks find hold deep in our flesh: Part 1 by Kate Fielding and Mandy Ord

• Wastelands of the Crown by Jim Morgan
  

• Full Immersion by Vanessa Russell
  

Fiction

• The End by Caroline Lee
  

• How to Kill a Cane Toad by Robert Drewe
  

• Waiting for Mr Mowbray by Paul Morgan

• The Chinese Submarine by Tim Richards
  

Interview

• You did not read Faulkner! Sophie Cunningham talks to Luke Davies

Poetry

• traces by Julie Chevalier
  

• He Remembers the Mountain by Peter Coghill
  

• Falkland Islands Wolf by Brett Dionysius

• Voyaging by Adrienne Eberhard

• Birthday Party Ever by Michael Farrell
  

• After living together for a year by Carol Jenkins

• Thinning the Poem;The Finches by Martin Langford

• Harmonic by Rose Lucas

• I Found the Six of Spades in Cat Ba Town by Kent McCarter
  

• Two exits & how to by Andrew Macdonald
  

• Two Circles of Love by John Millett

• Seaweed by David Musgrave
  

• Dining with the Pure Merinos; Rumi 1207-2007 by Geoff Page
  

• Give; Lamb by Tracy Ryan

• Lift; Dandelion by Andrew Sant