AustLit

Author's note: After François Péron’s journal account, 1802

'Patrick White’s The Aunt’s Story, published in 1948 and set in the 1930s, is one of the few Australian novels that features an Arab male character. His inclusion gives readers an insight into how an Arab was represented and, by extension, perceived in early- to mid-twentieth century Australia. The Arab in this case is a travelling salesman or a hawker, an occupation adopted by many early male and female migrants from what was then a region in Syria, today known as Lebanon. Hawkers traversed vast tracts of remote Australia peddling an array of wares, and their arrival to a country town or estate like Meroë in The Aunt’s Story, was met with excitement.' (Introduction)

'Tone deafness, or to use its more technical term, “congenital amusia,” is not an illusion, though some teachers of singing have optimistically claimed that it is. It is true that most people can sing and that some people who sing badly nevertheless hear music very well. The Collins Concise Dictionary (Australian edition) gives as the definition of tone deafness: “unable to distinguish subtle differences in musical pitch.” A scientific study in the Science Daily (August 2007) has estimated that about one in twenty of the population has this condition, which should not be confused with ordinary deafness or progressive loss of hearing like that which affected the Australian poets and writers, Henry Lawson and Judith Wright. Henry Lawson had completely lost his hearing by the age of fourteen as the result of a childhood ear infection and Judith Wright progressively lost her hearing as an adult and became totally deaf in her seventies. Like the composer Beethoven, who continued to compose after losing his hearing, their perception of musical pitch was unaffected. Amusics, or those with tone deafness, have a perceptual problem. They are unable to distinguish differences in pitch or even in some cases to follow the simplest musical tunes. It is my contention that, while many, perhaps most, poets are drawn to poetry through an initial love of music or song, some of the greatest are deaf to musical pitch and are drawn primarily through the musicality of language.' (Introduction)

'In the 1870s, the American novelist Henry James invented the “inter - national novel” as a kind of storytelling in which he played the manners of one nationality against those of another and recorded the result. In 2010, the Japan-born English novelist Kazuo Ishiguro asserted: “I am a writer who wishes to write international novels. What is an ‘international’ novel? I believe it to be one, quite simply, that contains a vision of life that is of importance to people of varied backgrounds around the world” (Ishiguro n.p.). How did things get so much less interesting?' (Introduction)

'Andrew McGahan was finishing and editing The Rich Man’s House during the illness that led to his distressingly early death on 1 February this year, but the novel shows no sign of diminished power. The writing is as compelling as ever, the ideas as large-scale, the narrative surges along at the cracking pace of a great thriller.'

 (Introduction)

'joanne burns is regarded as Australia’s pre-eminent satirical poet, known for humour and wordplay in her confrontation with modern society and its clichés. apparently is her 17th collection, no less quizzical and hard-hitting than its predecessors. At the same time, it goes deeper, interrogating the creative principle and the provenance of individual poems. The book’s title is expressive of the nature of its contents, which “appear like visions, intensely experienced but barely real.” burns divides these experiences into four distinct sections.' (Introduction)

'Tony Birch is usually identified as an accomplished writer of literary fiction as well as a leading intellectual. His most recent book, The White Girl, has been found wanting by at least one reader, who complains of its “uncommon moral simplicity.” Notwithstanding his praise for Birch’s “limpid grace as a prose writer,” Geordie Williamson finds that the book offers “a rainbow parade of contemporary merits.” The review appeared first in the Australian (which has a paywall). The full review was then posted on a literary reviews blog, by Williamson himself, after parts had been quoted and criticised by a blogger.' (Introduction)

'In 1989, Kathleen Mary Fallon published with Sybylla Press her novel Working Hot, described by Fiona McGregor as “a novel about dykes in Sydney, written with an experimental verve that still dazzles today” (“The Hot Desk”). Fallon was claimed by Marion May Campbell to be “the first explicitly sex-positive queer female writer in Australia” (Textual Intercourse). Working Hot was an instant hit with many second wave feminists interested in radical, subversive writing. It was also variously designated as “urban grunge” and as having affinities with the writing of Americans, Kathy Acker and Pat Califia (now Patrick Califia-Rice).' (Introduction)

'Despairing about the proliferation of memoirs, New York Times re viewer Neil Genzlinger once pleaded for a “moment of silence please, for the lost art of shutting up.” Perhaps Genzlinger would be more open to the “hybrid memoir” that leans more overtly into the idea of memoir as a reflection of the self in the crossroads of place, culture and time; less about “me” and more about “us.”' (Introduction)

'Dave Drayton’s debut book-length collection of poems is named P(oe)Ms. In short it’s PMs, or, to extrapolate, it’s “PM knick-knackscum-bric-a-brac,” as Melbourne launcher and famed crossword-setter David Astle—or “dastardly DA,” as my mother calls him—put it. What I mean to say is that names and naming (right down to their very letters) are key to this work.' (Introduction)

'The essay collection Intimate Antipathies is Carman’s first full length work since his short story collection An Elegant Young Man won the NSW Premier’s New Writing Award in 2014. His first publication also led to him being named a SMH Best Young Novelist. This latest offering is composed of eleven essays, including his now in/famous jeremiad “Getting Square in a Jerking Circle.” He identifies the genesis of the collection as the moment he was asked by a literary journal if he had any thoughts on the life of the writer, and notes that the work grew out of his uncertainty about what to do with his new-found fame.' (Introduction)