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One might have thought the lives of some of the writers and artists within this book - Woolf, Rimbaud, Picasso - had been written to the point where little more could be offered, but Scott's distillations are a fresh and intriguing making new.' (Publication summary)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
-
Examined Lives
2021
single work
column
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 16 January 2021; (p. 18) -
Names, Names, Names! : Experimental Mini-biographies
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , August no. 423 2020; (p. 59)
— Review of Shorter Lives 2020 selected work poetry 'John A. Scott's Shorter Lives is written at an intersection between experimental fiction, biography, and poetry. It inherits aspects of earlier works, such as preoccupations with sex and France. As the title indicates, it narrates mini-biographies of famous writers — Arthur Rimbaud, Virginia Stephen (Woolf), Andre Breton, and Mina Loy — and one painter — Pablo Picasso —with interludes devoted to the lesser-known poet Charles Cros and the art dealer Ambroise Vollard. The narratives are largely distilled from more conventional prose sources. Scott gives himself poetic licence to fictionalise, and anachronise: Paul Cezanne's collection of twentieth-century American paintings, for example.' (Introduction) -
John A. Scott: Shorter Lives
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Poetry Review , no. 15 2020;
— Review of Shorter Lives 2020 selected work poetry'John A. Scott’s spectacular Shorter Lives is made up of a series of poetic biographies of crucial figures in the development of what is usually called Modernism but which, as the distance from it lengthens, looks less like a movement and more like a rejection of the nineteenth century and everything it stood for. Developments in art, literature and music, often violently ideologically opposed to each other, were gathered together by this common drive to a rejection of the past on the basis of the principle that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. And the rejection of the European nineteenth century is something that continues to this day, one hundred and twenty years after the formal end of that century, especially in the grotesque parodies of nineteenth century culture – as embodiments of all the issues contemporary Western life disapproves of – that appear in popular culture. This seems unprecedented: it’s normal to kick your parents as you struggle to make an individual life, but not normal to keep on kicking the crumbling skeletons of your great-great-grandparents.' (Introduction)
-
John A. Scott: Shorter Lives
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Poetry Review , no. 15 2020;
— Review of Shorter Lives 2020 selected work poetry'John A. Scott’s spectacular Shorter Lives is made up of a series of poetic biographies of crucial figures in the development of what is usually called Modernism but which, as the distance from it lengthens, looks less like a movement and more like a rejection of the nineteenth century and everything it stood for. Developments in art, literature and music, often violently ideologically opposed to each other, were gathered together by this common drive to a rejection of the past on the basis of the principle that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. And the rejection of the European nineteenth century is something that continues to this day, one hundred and twenty years after the formal end of that century, especially in the grotesque parodies of nineteenth century culture – as embodiments of all the issues contemporary Western life disapproves of – that appear in popular culture. This seems unprecedented: it’s normal to kick your parents as you struggle to make an individual life, but not normal to keep on kicking the crumbling skeletons of your great-great-grandparents.' (Introduction)
-
Names, Names, Names! : Experimental Mini-biographies
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , August no. 423 2020; (p. 59)
— Review of Shorter Lives 2020 selected work poetry 'John A. Scott's Shorter Lives is written at an intersection between experimental fiction, biography, and poetry. It inherits aspects of earlier works, such as preoccupations with sex and France. As the title indicates, it narrates mini-biographies of famous writers — Arthur Rimbaud, Virginia Stephen (Woolf), Andre Breton, and Mina Loy — and one painter — Pablo Picasso —with interludes devoted to the lesser-known poet Charles Cros and the art dealer Ambroise Vollard. The narratives are largely distilled from more conventional prose sources. Scott gives himself poetic licence to fictionalise, and anachronise: Paul Cezanne's collection of twentieth-century American paintings, for example.' (Introduction) -
Examined Lives
2021
single work
column
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 16 January 2021; (p. 18)
Awards
- 2021 shortlisted Prime Minister's Literary Awards — Poetry
