Hidden Author
Dear Editor,
The Fat Author Replies to Robert Dessaix:
The author does not embody Iiterary classification nor does she base her work on literary theory though literary criticism does inform her literary practice.
The critical texts on multiculturalism do propose difference and have formed a valid and important part of dialogue in Australian literature.
Dessaix truly exploits the multicultural ... (read more)
Delights and jolts
Dear Editor,
ABR is always engaging, even when one disagrees with the thrust or standpoint of particular reviews, but surely the May issue is the most brilliant ever. An edition which has a poet (Peter Rose) reviewing David Malouf’s new novel, Brian Matthews on Henry Lawson, Elizabeth Webby on Xavier Herbert, and Robert Phiddian on Penny Gay’s monograph about Shakespearean ... (read more)
Stickers on a rotten apple
Dear Editor,
In his review of Angela Bennie’s anthology of hostile Australian reviews, Peter Rose is correct when he surmises that ‘we tend to exaggerate the number of severe reviews’ (September 2006). I think that, generally, Australians do not like disagreement; they prefer to ‘keep the peace’, and this is mostly true of our critics also.
The really troubl ... (read more)
Dear Editor,
How disappointing your cover feature on The First Stone turned out to be. I feel very let down by the most mediocre review I’ve read on this most talked-about work. Your former Editor, Rosemary Sorensen, wrote a superb, thought-provoking piece in the Sydney Morning Herald. I expected the review in ABR to be of similar quality.
Brian White, Elwood, Vic.
(Ed’s reply: You might be ... (read more)
Dear Editor,
Dr Jenna Mead claims, among other things in her most recent attempt to discredit The First Stone, that I have ‘invented dialogue’ and written ‘hypothetical meetings with imaginary characters’. All the conversations and encounters in the book are documented in detailed, scrupulous notes. This includes my account of a telephone conversation between Dr Mead and me, which she wou ... (read more)
The past is in Scotland
Dear Editor,
Christina Hill’s review of Peter Goldsworthy’s latest novel, Everything I Knew (November 2008), seems sure-footed in both its negative assessment of an ‘overwrought, undisciplined’ work and its appreciation of the novel’s compositional play, both intricate and subversive, with L.P. Hartley’s The Go-Between. It makes no mention, however, of the nov ... (read more)
... (read more)
What was your pathway to publishing?
An Arts degree and a youthfully optimistic view that I could land a job in publishing when I was living in London in my twenties. Working at Penguin Books in the wake of Penguin’s publishing Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses was an exciting and dramatic time. I was sold on the courage, the passion, and the literary life around me.
How many title ... (read more)
Never far from one’s mind these days, the events of September 11, 2001, and their direct aftermath in Afghanistan and elsewhere, had to be prominent in this month’s issue of ABR, such is their complex resonance and ubiquitous iconography. To complement Morag Fraser’s essay in this issue on the consequences of ‘September 11’ for civic rights and democratic processes – in Australia as we ... (read more)