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Grand illusion

by
March 2012, no. 339

As I Was Saying: A collection of musings by Robert Dessaix

Vintage, $27.95 pb, 224 pp

Grand illusion

by
March 2012, no. 339

‘I’m sitting in my tower, cogitating.’ Well, Dessaix admits, it’s not a real tower, though he likes to think of it that way. Actually, it is an elevated writing room in his house in Hobart, with a view of the mountains to the west. He is cogitating, not meditating – he’s particular about this – and the thoughts he proceeds to capture on the page are those of a mind given to rambling. As he sits there, the train of thought moves off to connect him with other writers in other towers, widely distant in place and time: Vita Sackville-West at Sissinghurst in Kent, Michel de Montaigne in rural France, W.B. Yeats in County Galway, Rainer Maria Rilke at the Château de Muzot in Switzerland.

Jane Goodall reviews 'As I Was Saying: A collection of musings' by Robert Dessaix

As I Was Saying: A collection of musings

by Robert Dessaix

Vintage, $27.95 pb, 224 pp

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