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 […]
Meanjin Turns 80
In December 1940, editor Clem Christesen published the first edition of Meanjin … a slim volume of Queensland poetry. It was a publication for which he imagined a significant role in Australian culture. We’ve republished his first edition editorial in the new Summer 2020 edition of the magazine, along with reflections from all of Meanjin’s past editors. Clem would go on to edit Meanjin until 1974, a sterling effort, one that almost matches Meanjin’s own impressive longevity. 80 years … it’s a long time in Australian publishing and a span through which Meanjin has continued to bring readers the finest in Australian thoughts […]
What I’m Reading
When my eldest child was ten, he liked to read multiple books at once, arranged in a circle around him on his bed like a giant book buffet. He would pick one up, read a few pages, sometimes even just a paragraph or two, then put it down and move onto another. As a serial monogamist when it came to books, I was horrified. For me, reading had always been an act of immersion. Surely, he was just skimming along the surface of these books, barely getting his mind wet. I remember asking his teacher if I should encourage him […]
Editing Books: An Act of Individual Solidarity
Let me begin with an assertion: Literary editing is both profession and practice. I use the word literary but I mean this in the broader categorical sense, rather than the bookshop genre sense. I say profession because it is a job: an editor works, usually, in exchange for some sort of wage. But it is also practice because it involves creative work, too. The editor works in service—to the author, to the publisher, to the reader. At the same time, editing involves its own sense of artistry. Plenty of others before me have written about the various characteristics of this […]
What I’m Reading
‘Warm-ups’ by Abigail Ulman In the first week of lockdown in Brisbane, my friend texted me three words: GET DISNEY PLUS. She has a 5-year-old. I have two little kids. GET DISNEY PLUS, she yelled at me again, even though I had not replied the first time. So I did. Then I bought Stan as well, to watch Normal People, certain that I’d remember to cancel my subscription as soon as I finished it. Or the next month, or the one after that, but here we are in November. Eventually, of course I will cancel my Stan subscription. In short: […]
Trump’s Coup Of Bad Faith
Just over a year ago there was a coup in Bolivia. Early votes in the 2019 Bolivian election favoured the conservative opposition, but as counting continued, the left wing incumbent, Evo Morales, took the lead. In the view of the Organization of American States (OAS), the primary election-monitoring body of the Americas, this reversal of fortunes was deeply irregular. The OAS released a press statement to that effect, opposition protests erupted, and soon after the military asked Morales to resign. In the weeks that followed, the OAS, The New York Times, The Economist, and the United States Secretary of State […]
Trumpism’s Long Tail
The response to the victory of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris has been part euphoria, part relief that Donald Trump has been banished from the White House but while there is great reason for Biden supporters to celebrate, there has also been the sobering realisation that without a Senate majority his reform agenda may be stymied. Still, there are many things Biden can do without a Senate majority. He can immediately realign American foreign policy and re-establish good relationships with America’s traditional allies, many of whom have already indicated their relief/delight at his election. He can re-shape the Executive branch, […]
What I’m Reading
Since getting the job as Emerging Book Critic a few months ago, I’ve had to be very intentional about what I read because I realised I take much longer to get through a book than I used to. Working with deadlines is great in making sure I am deliberate and strategic about my reading. I finished Rachel Kushner’s The Mars Room recently, which was sensational. I felt really ashamed that I’d never read anything by her before. She has an extremely well-adjusted tenor for pacing and speech. By this, I mean the narrator’s speech—not the characters’ dialogue. The best line in the […]
Summer 2020 Edition: Out Soon
Our Summer 2020 edition is out next month. And it’s a special one—it marks Meanjin’s 80th birthday. Born December 1940, going strong. To mark the occasion, we asked some of our favourite thinkers to write in response to the idea: The Next 80 Years. Here’s a taste: The issue opens with reflective contributions from all of Meanjin’s living past editors. Tara June Winch and Behrouz Boochani offer a conversational meditation on time and the very notion of a future. Bruce Pascoe writes on the strange relationship non-Indigenous Australians have with trees, and wonders when we will realise that the forest […]
What I’m Reading
Back in early June, as Black Lives Matter activists took to the streets worldwide, I set myself a reading project: to avoid white writers for the rest of the year. For my standard ten or so books a month, I’d seek out authors who were anything but white. This resolution was an effort to de-centre whiteness in my cultural diet. After a lifetime of consuming stories authored by white people, it was time to listen to different voices. It was time to listen to colonised peoples instead of colonisers. It was time to listen to Indigenous voices instead of the […]
The Road To Listening
The Victorian State Government say they have waited long enough to complete the Western Highway upgrade, west of Ballarat. They say the court cases are over, too much money has been spent and ‘it’s time to get on with this urgently needed safety upgrade,’ over the objections of a group of Djab Wurrung people who have been occupying the site for 26 months now. Huge old trees are already coming down, and the works are advancing further towards several trees that are considered sacred. Security guards and police have fenced the trees off, and two protesters are in the trees. […]
What I’m Reading
Note: this piece contains extensive spoilers for both The Last of Us (2013) and The Last of Us Part II (2020). I’m reading a slick of blood on a staircase. I’m reading the slow embering of realisation in a person’s eyes. I’m reading The Last of Us Part II—a video game that makes ‘playing’ really not feel like the appropriate word. Video games always involve a strange blend of interactivity and restriction: they allow the player to make choices, but only within certain bounds. Lots of big-budget modern titles have tried to make those bounds as invisible as possible, […]
