AustLit
Latest Issues
Notes
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Contents indexed selectively.
Contents
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Detroit, I Do Mind,
single work
prose
travel
(p. 26-33)'The metal grill inside the doorway I squeezed through looks solid enough, so I edge out across it, feeling for flaws beneath the dust. To my left is the pit, open like a grave; ahead, the chair-less floor looks madly slanted. Light falls in through the round windows in swing doors at the back. There is a little box office squeezed in beside them. Above my head, the curve of the upper circle is just visible. Once-ornate plaster clings on, rotted with damp. For a second I imagine a rowdy audience up there, but the illusion passes.' (Introduction 26)
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On Over-Writing,
single work
prose
(p. 34-35)'I’m worried I’m an over-writer. Look, I just really like adjectives, okay? My worst stylistic habit is stringing them onto my sentences two at a time, like perfect glossy beads. I can see myself doing it, but can’t stop. Adverbs, too. And when I write descriptively, allusively, using grammar rhythmically, I sense my meaning sharpening a little more with each detail.' (Author's introduction 34)
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Pyrene,
single work
short story
(p. 37-44)
'This happened when I was a young man, just shy of my twenty-first birthday. All my life, I’d lived in a New South Wales country town; I won’t say which one, only that it was within four hours of Sydney and has since been abandoned. The town was a combination of abattoirs and grain and white collars. If you listened hard enough, you could hear the cries of a million cows in the throes of death...' (37)
- No Breaks, single work short story (p. 45-49)
- Hard to Be a God, single work essay (p. 50-55)
- On Gateway Drugs, single work essay (p. 56-57)
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A Person of Very Little Interest,
single work
essay
(p. 66-72)'I became a person of interest to the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) at 5:40 pm on 14 November 1969. At the time, I was a Year 10 student at Telopea Park High School in Canberra, and I was becoming increasingly interested in radical politics. I was not unique: several activist groups had sprung up already among secondary students. These were generally formed in response to the Vietnam War, and then focused on more local issues, often within schools.' (66)
- The Linden Treei"I gobbled a round of caephilly, then Theophily", single work poetry (p. 73)
- Young Follyi"It must seem like a mountain of folly", single work poetry (p. 73)
- Invisible Spearsi"A stadium can hold the most sound", single work poetry (p. 74)
- Austerityi"The person honourable, the crimes austere.", single work poetry (p. 75)
- Paradise Losingi"Le paradis n’est pas artificiel,", single work poetry (p. 75)
- The Bush and the Internet Are Interchangeablei"A wife looks at her husband; a treefrog at a modem.", single work poetry (p. 76)
- A Sky Open and Shuti"One day later on", single work poetry (p. 77)
- Autumn Poemi"I am ankle-deep in leaves", single work poetry (p. 78)
- Arcadyi"A northern branch – rough handled – right", single work poetry (p. 79)
- Agora, Arcadiai"Hardest of the places to begin the blueprint, chewed cuticles", single work poetry (p. 80)
- Glossary, single work poetry (p. 84)
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‘The Most Fucking Intense, Crazy, Rock ’n’ Roll Thing You Could Be Writing about’,
single work
essay
(p. 85-90)
'In the summer of 2013 I had a nightmare. At that time the cities of Australia were scorching in temperatures in the forties and immense bushfires had come to ravage the southern part of the continent year after year. For months I had been plagued by dreams of pursuit and murder, and in the unbearable summer heat my mind drifted in and out of sleep like flotsam near a desolate shore. I had thrown off the thin sheet covering me and in the midst of a dream in which I was haunted by a fear that I could not place, I heard someone outside of it say the word halal in a sinister tone and I woke up. The room was empty of course, but I was convinced that there had been someone standing over my bed.' (85)
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Lessons in Class and Casualisation,
single work
essay
(p. 91-97)
'It is not fashionable to write about ‘class’ in universities, unless accompanied by words like ‘transcend’, ‘post-industrial’ or ‘knowledge-economy’. And yet, academics should have a great deal to say about class, not least because they work in one of Australia’s most insecure work environments.' (Author's introduction)
