Somewhere overseas, more than a decade ago, I was among a group of poets, novelists and translators, who were visiting another writer at his historic home. Inside, before I could ask anyone about the house, its age and its style, I found myself knocking on a wall. Days later, one of the novelists who had been there said, with a chuckle: That is the difference between us—a novelist would begin by describing the house; a poet knocks on the wall to check that it is real. * In thinking about the topic ‘What I am Reading’, I was stalled for… [Read more]
What I’m Reading
I might as well be honest. A great year of reading it was not. I had a baby in May this year, in the first flush of the pandemic, so I feel zero sense of shame about what I did or did not read. I figure whatever I get around to is a bit like yoga: doing anything is a win, even if I just lie there breathing and trying to follow what’s going on. First, I can definitely tell you what I have not been reading. I did not read Defoe’s The Plague, Camus’ La Peste, or any other… [Read more]
The Vulgar, Not The Vulgate
I find myself avoiding the word ‘sex’. It is an ugly word. Not because it is boorish, but because it is too refined. ‘Sex’ is clinical: sterile, precise, institutional. It comes from the Norman French, originally Latin—what philologists Reneé and Henry Kahane called ‘the status symbol of the rich, the powerful, the refined, and the snobbish’. It is the word of aristocratic victors, looking down upon Anglo-Saxon oiks. Even today, ‘sex’ belongs in the official lexicon of government, business and academia. Adults use it in treatises and memoranda, often without sniggers or twitches. It is acceptable— that is to say,… [Read more]
What I’m Reading
The romance and horror of the navigable world I amuse myself by finding patterns in and between the books I tumble into, or stumble over, or on occasion drag myself through, grumbling. Lately, I have been able to gather many of them loosely with a theme I think of as the romance of the navigable world. These books do not shatter or rebuild the world; instead, they share the pleasant and dangerous fiction that the rules of the world can be learned. It is a dream that unites aviation histories and Regency romances, crime fiction, and business development guides. I… [Read more]
Angels in the Anthropocene
The dog doesn’t know she was a panic buy. She plays, and nips, and pisses on the rug just like any ordinary puppy. She has the bony chest of every kelpie, with a dash of white in the black and tan fur. Her legs and muzzle, a syrupy brown, make her look like she’s been dipped in honey. The rest of her is blackstrap molasses. Her eyes are the kind of warm yellow I long for at the end of winter. She’s a working dog bought for company, and I’ve had to massage out the herding instinct and hone instead… [Read more]
What I’m Reading
During my adolescence I read almost nothing. I lived on farms. When I was 19 someone gave me a copy of Patrick White’s novel The Vivisector and it blew my head off. White’s style captured me, his acerbic poetry and mordant (almost cruel) representations of art and artists and society people in Sydney. Characters come and go in vivid takes and take-downs (by the author) in what I later realised was White’s typical satire and grotesquerie—the latter as a kind of gothic lightning. I had realised the style of authorial narration. I woke as a reader … Recently, I fell… [Read more]
Our National Culture of Denial
The targeted reporting of my blog post as ‘unAustralian’ led to dozens of death threats flooding my inboxes. Suddenly, I was being told to go back to where I’d come from or else.
Reading the Virus: The Contagion of Covid Publishing
Racing to publish a book on a significant event or trend is no new phenomenon. Timelines are pulled forward—though it still takes a few months to put a book together, from writing the words to stock arriving in bookshops. Recent examples include books on the Thai cave rescue, Christchurch massacre, and forthcoming titles on the 2019-20 Black Summer. It’s no surprise then that with such a globally pervasive event such as the current pandemic, Covid-19 books are already appearing. In the acknowledgements section of her book about Covid-19, Deborah Mackenzie states ‘this is what the book trade calls a “crash”… [Read more]
What I’m Reading
The Queer Reader 101 booklist started as a joke between my girlfriend and me. I say started, because now there’s an actual stack on my bedside table: The Price of Salt (Patricia Highsmith), Valencia (Michelle Tea), Written on the Body (Jeanette Winterson) and Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl (Andrea Lawlor). I’ve added some Eileen Myles and Ivan Coyote, and Angela Steidele’s Gentleman Jack. But since I’m a slow and distracted novel reader, so far I have only begun each of these, dipping in and out, taking breaks. I spent one of those breaks replaying the video game… [Read more]
A New Generation of Australian War Criminals
After almost two decades of the Australian Defence Force’s involvement in Afghanistan, it takes something major for the crisis there to warrant national attention. Streaks of deadly car bombings and rocket strikes rarely register. Most don’t bat an eyelid at the new normalisation of relations with the Taliban and their sinister return to global prominence. Just recently, 22 promising scholars were slain during a shooting at Kabul University, where my own father studied some 40 years ago. Within hours, the news cycle had shifted elsewhere. However, a damning report alleging that 39 Afghans were slain mercilessly by ADF soldiers was… [Read more]
