In 2017 when the same-sex marriage debate came about, it turned very nasty very quickly. I had been slowly making my way through an old list of ‘50 Books to Read Before You Die’, and while more often than not they were excellent reads (Jane Eyre never seemed to want to end but by the time it did I didn’t want it to), the content was almost consistently bleak and exhausting. Escaping one cruel world just to dive straight into yet another cruel world just wasn’t working for me anymore. So I turned to YA. It felt nice to leave… [Read more]
Was Sir Mark Oliphant Australia’s—and Britain’s—J. Robert Oppenheimer?
At primary school in Melbourne in the mid 1950s I used to get annoyed when we were told to pour our third pints of morning recess milk down the gully trap. When I went home for lunch the ABC Country Hour was usually on the radio and on those no-milk days farmers would be warned that radioactive clouds were drifting eastward from the atomic test sites in Monte Bello and then Emu Field and then Maralinga. My dad—an ex US Navy officer—would be in to lunch too and, although the mildest of men most of the time, would swear (he had… [Read more]
On Pleasure, the Irrational and Tame Impala
There is a moment—a threshold that can’t be neatly mapped—when an interest becomes an attachment. Here’s how it goes. At first you appreciate an object, you enjoy it and you can say why: a sensation, a colour, a texture, a run of words, some combination of these. Then, suddenly, you’re in its thrall. It’s as if someone had rotated the object slightly, allowing you to approach it from a new angle. The assemblage of pieces that once seemed notable but ordinary now rings at a frequency that resonates with your soul. You can’t quite account for what caused the difference,… [Read more]
Gillette: The Best A Woman Can Expect
Unless you had something better to do this week, you’ve probably seen Gillette’s new ‘The Best Men Can Be’ campaign. Interestingly, the Gillette YouTube account doesn’t call this an ad but a ‘short film’. It’s upfront about intending to spark an emotional response. But from whom? ‘Is this the best a man can be?” asks a serious voiceover to a slideshow of classic male behaviour. There’s wolf-whistling and old sexist cartoons and Girls Gone Wild. There’s a barbecue, which as we know is extremely manly. A line of man-drones repeats without emotion: Boys will be boys. Boys will be boys… [Read more]
What I’m Reading
I often feel shy, even embarrassed, when asked what I am reading. Books can indicate our likes, our passions; they can reveal what catches our eye when browsing, or what we seek out when no-one is watching us. Granted, sometimes what we are reading says nothing about us beyond that we will force ourselves through anything if it is a gift from a beloved aunt, or that we mistakenly assumed Fifty Shades of Grey was a book about black and white photography. Nevertheless, the question of what one is reading can be—or at least feel—immensely personal. How do I tell you… [Read more]
Present Tense: W.B. Yeats’s ‘The Second Coming’ at 100
‘He’s writing about Donald Trump, right?’ The student quoted by the American author and academic Jay Parini no doubt echoes countless other students participating in literature classes being held throughout the world. The student in Parini’s class also joins more than one commentator who has noticed a recent surge in the popularity of W.B. Yeats’s poem ‘The Second Coming’ coinciding with the advent of the Trump administration and what so many of us feel is a new era of global turmoil, uncertainty and dislocation, if not outright criminal insanity. What’s more, all this takes place at the centenary of the… [Read more]
Calling All Settler Colonialists
As January 26 looms, the culture wars are getting louder. The National Settler-Colonisation Day Council (NSCDC)* strongly urges all Australians to resist caving in, no matter what the other side says. There is only one side to stand in the culture wars, and it rhymes with ‘right’. In collaboration with the government, we will bravely protect all that is good about Australian nationalism and instil a sense of pride in citizens. So, on National Settler-Colonisation Day, all Australians attending mandatory citizenship events must comply with the new dress code. We will also conduct random backyard inspections to monitor what people… [Read more]
The Stickiness of Truthiness
When the lights came up on the evening performance of The Lifespan of a Fact at Studio 54 in Manhattan’s manic theatre district on Tuesday January 8, 2019, it was 8.53pm (I checked my phone as we shuffled out of the theatre and back onto the frigid street). The play is in its final week on Broadway, stuffed with talented magnetic performers (Daniel Radcliffe is as different to Harry Potter or Alan Strang as a man so famous for the parts he played as a teen could hope to be, a comfortable Cherry Jones, and a consistently delightful Bobby Cannavale),… [Read more]
What I’m Reading
I recently saw Eric Abetz, and it made me unhappy. He was standing on the street in a patch of Hobart light, bathing in the weak wash of the southern sun, a smile on his face, and this scene—the banality of his contentment juxtaposed with the pallid horror of his existence—wrought in me a deep, gnawing displeasure. I was supposed to be finding lunch, but I could no longer concentrate on what I wanted to eat. He looked so happy there in the pale light, this man who has opposed decriminalising homosexuality, who has linked abortion with breast cancer on… [Read more]
Meanjin’s 20 Most-Read of 2018
And what, we hear you ask, were the 20 most-popular reads on the Meanjin website through 2018? Here you go. What a delightful, provocative, engaging, and thoughtful selection. Well done Meanjin readers, you chose well. 1. Jane Gilmour: What I learned About Poverty https://meanjin.com.au/essays/what-i-learned-about-poverty/ 2. Emma Pitman: Misogyny is a Human Pyramid https://meanjin.com.au/blog/misogyny-is-a-human-pyramid/ 3. Bruce Pascoe: Australia—Temper and Bias https://meanjin.com.au/essays/11312/ 4. Margaret Simons: Michelle Guthrie—Why She Went https://meanjin.com.au/blog/michelle-guthrie-why-she-went/ 5. Mark Pesce: The Last Days of Reality https://meanjin.com.au/essays/the-last-days-of-reality/ 6. Liz Duck-Chong: We Need To Talk About Tom Ballard https://meanjin.com.au/blog/we-need-to-talk-about-tom-ballard/ 7. Katharine Murphy: The Political Life Is No Life At All… [Read more]
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