Mank: The Kane Duplicity
At the beginning of F For for Fake, Orson Welles’ 1973 essay film about forgery, deception and lies, the filmmaker addresses the audience directly and sets out a thesis for what is to follow. ‘Tell it by the fireside or in a marketplace or in a movie,’ he says, ‘almost any story is almost certainly some kind of lie.’ He promises that, over the course of the next hour, he’s going to give them the unvarnished truth. David Fincher’s Mank is based on one Hollywood’s most discredited fictions: the idea that screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz was the real genius behind Citizen Kane and that Welles’ […]
What I’m Reading
Lately, people in my life keep asking me: ‘Do you read fiction at all? Or do you just read memoir?’ The first time I’m asked the question, I smile. ‘Of course I read fiction,’ I reply. ‘Don’t you remember me posting Instagram stories about being obsessed with Laura McPhee-Browne’s Cherry Beach and Vivian Pham’s The Coconut Children during lockdown?’ When I am asked the question again by someone else, at a post-lockdown brunch, I give a vague response but am disquieted by it. Later, I check my book-tracking app. Sure enough, I haven’t been reading many novels. I add about […]
80 Years of Cover Art: A Meanjin Zoom Event
Join us via Zoom on Wednesday 24 February from 12pm AEDT for a one-hour panel discussion about the art of Meanjin covers from 1940 to present. Book designer and artist WH Chong, art historian Christopher Marshall and design expert Daniel Huppatz will talk us through the changing styles of the covers of one of Australia’s oldest literary journals, examining how they reflect the forming Australian national and artistic identity over time. The discussion is the first in a series of events commemorating Meanjin’s 80th anniversary, in conjunction with the University of Melbourne’s Archives and Special Collections department. This free Zoom […]
What if We Never Recover?
It is the beginning of summer. It is hot but windy, as so many summer days are in London. It is that strange period between the first and second national lockdowns. COVID-19 cases are not as ubiquitous as they were in the spring, but they’re on the rise again, and no-one is paying any attention. It is 6am and I wake up with a start at my partner’s house. I lurch forward in bed and try my best to catch all the vomit in my mouth before it escapes onto his duvet. I run to the bathroom, only I limp, […]
Essays
More Than Opening the Door
In her 2015 Sydney Review of Books article ‘What the essayist spills’, Maria Tumarkin draws a clear distinction between ‘confessor’ and ‘essayist’. The first is a writer who spills everything for an audience primed to receive and ‘learn’ from it. The latter sees their material as an entry to wider discussions; ‘smashing the bottom from underneath the author’s experiences’ and steering…
Fiction
The Secret Garden
This bloody orphan, standing at the foot of my bed. Small, pallid, yellow-haired and sour-faced. ‘I’ve stolen a garden,’ she says.
Every night this kid wakes me up. She says the same thing each time, in exactly the same way. The third night, I’m already irritated. ‘You said that yesterday,’ I tell her. ‘And the day before. Who are you anyway?’
Memoir
Live On
It’s basically empty!’ Tim says of my spare room. He’s touring the house, although he’s been here many times. We’re both looky-loos. He holds out his arms to assess the size of the space, then turns back to focus on me. ‘You could totally fit a baby in here!’ I mime shooting myself in the head.
Poetry
Demolition Man v. the No Freedoms Act
Lockdown makes me crazy for action
films—all that sweat and beef and stupid risk.
I love an action-Arnie or -Stallone, the close-up
of an arm, offered to a dangling damsel,
who must think, there’s just no way
I can get a grip on that hunk of quivering
muscle. I am especially fond of plots
that don’t make sense or stretch us
