Reviewed: Luke Carman, Intimate Antipathies, Giramondo, 2019

Early into his new essay collection Intimate Antipathies, the follow-up to his NSW Premier’s Award–winning An Elegant Young Man, Luke Carman shares Gore Vidal’s theory on the two kinds of writer. The first is the true wordsmith; obsessed with mastering the art of language, their passion lies not in what they write about but how they write it. The second is the writer whose chosen vocation is a kind of belated therapy; theirs is a feverish but ultimately futile endeavour not to conquer the written word but to utilise it in the vain hope of overcoming some long-ago inflicted psychic damage.