AustLit

'‘Experimental writing’ can sometimes seem like a wastebasket diagnosis for any text that defies categorisation. Even when used precisely, it begs certain questions. Isn’t all creative writing ‘experimental’ to some degree? Isn’t the trick to conceal the experimentation? And what relationship does it bear to the ‘avant-garde’? If avant-gardism implies a radical philosophy of art, where does ‘experimentalism’ fit today? Is it not part of the valorisation of novelty, of innovation for innovation’s sake, which has gripped the literary establishment in recent decades? (When books like Milkman [2018] and Ducks, Newburyport [2019] fall victim to the cosiest of literary prizes, where have the real radicals gone?)' (Introduction)

'What sort of heart do you have? Love shows itself in many different ways and while we usually know the sort of heart someone has, sometimes it's a little hard to tell Hedgehog Heart is a joyful celebration of love and friendship.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'John Brack’s famous 1955 painting, Collins St, 5pm, reminds us that Australian life in the 1950s could be dull. Really dull. Brack’s lugubrious grey commuters march down a grey Collins Street, committed to a life of slavish uniformity. But many of his ­contemporaries took a different approach. They embraced ­colour, and excelled at it — from the violent colours of Arthur Boyd to the intricate, subtler pigments of Fred Williams, through art the colour and vividness of the Australian landscape could drip into its cities. And Mirka Mora, the Melbourne painter and local celebrity who died last year aged 90, has to be one of the most colourful of all.' (Introduction)

'Literature inspired by drugs tends to swing between extremes. On the one hand, drugs are the very doors of perception, gateways to Xanadu; on the other they are a source of grim addictions, lotus plants that tempt one into indefinite living sleep. In recent decades there have been the highs of William S. Burroughs, Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson and Irvine Welsh, but rarer are those memoirists with experiences of addiction and philosophy who can reflect on the subject in the tradition of Thomas De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821). Well, cue Chris Fleming’s On Drugs.'(Introduction)