AustLit
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Contents
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Paratactic Stammers : Temporality in the Novels of Gail Jones,
single work
essay
'Norman Saadi Nikro’s essay, ‘Paractatic Stammers: Temporality in the Novels of Gail Jones,’ sets out to explore how Jones’ ‘sense of fascination and wonder with the technology and culture of modernism informs the phenomenology and tenor of her novelistic style, especially the characters that emerge through the wave lengths of this style.’ Addressing himself to Jones’ literary fiction published to date, Nikro seeks to ‘track the duration in her novels whereby memory, history and story are experienced by her characters as something like intersections, intervals nor spacings, taut and tense folds or pleats in which time is riven by “a strange accession to memory and speech,” as the character Perdita comes to learn in Jones’s Sorry (202).’ Drawing in part on the work of Mikhail Bakhtin and on Gilles Deleuze’s ‘engagement with the work of Bergson,’ Nikro examines in Jones the ‘relational contiguity of parts whose variable movements and orientations to one another bring about a transfiguration of their subjective capacities (as in Perdita’s realisation of her stuttering as a relational dynamic).’ ‘Paractatic Stammers: Temporality in the Novels of Gail Jones,’ offers a rich and original reading of Jones’ fiction, both sympathetic and critically rigorous. Echoing Jones’ own views on modernity, Nikro traces in her novels a poetics of modernity that inflects both the writing and the thematics of the work. ‘Jones’s prose style,’ he suggests, ‘what she calls “a kind of prose poetics’” (Royo Grasa 1), calls attention to the gaps and intervals by which the temporality of narration is not only possible, but rendered a vacant site for the stammer of an interruptive image or voice encompassing an alternative engagement of time and its graphic imprints.’ Like Kirkpatrick, Nikro too highlights the forceful way in which an Australian author develops a distinct narrative voice, in the case of Jones one informed by a constant intertwining of local and global aesthetic and political sensibilities.' (Editor's introduction)
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Being International?’ Edith Campbell Berry’s Geneva in Frank Moorhouse’s 'Grand Days',
single work
essay
'Can one be an insider in international affairs—or does being international condemn one to a kind of permanent outside, even within one’s original nation? This question may not be at the top of most people’s list of priorities, unless you are Edith Campbell Berry in Frank Moorhouse’s Grand Days, his novel from 1993 set in Geneva in the 1920s—or me as a Dane teaching anglophone postcolonial literatures in present-day Geneva. For Edith it is an urgent matter of identity; for me more an intriguing balancing act where identity (which I really don’t understand or approve of, anyway) for all practical purposes gives way to finesse. Or for both of us, a balancing act of survival in a situation where inside and outside are completely imbricated in each other, yet still active as opposites.' (Introduction)
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Tim Winton : Abjection, Meaning-making and Australian Sacredness,
single work
criticism
'Tim Winton’s fiction has divided critics. His writing has been characterised as nostalgic (Dixon), as too Christian (Goldsworthy), as blokey, and even misogynist (Schürholz). He has been pilloried on the blog site Worst of Perth, with its ‘Wintoning Project,’ which calls for contributions of ‘Australian or Western Australian schmaltz, in the style of our most famous literary son, master dispenser of literary cheese and fake WA nostalgia Tim Winton’ (online). And he has won the top Australian literary prize, The Miles Franklin Award, four times (Shallows, 1984; Cloudstreet, 1992; Dirt Music, 2002; and Breath, 2009). Winton’s oeuvre spans three decades. It remains highly recognisable in its use of Australian vernacular and its sun-filled, beachy Western Australian settings; but it has also taken some dramatic, dark and probingly self-questioning turns. While critics often look for common strands in an author’s oeuvre, it is revealing to consider developments and changes between individual works. How do the darker, more abject elements of Winton’s imaginative visions relate to the ‘wholesome’ if macho Aussie surfer image, or to the writer of plenitude somehow embarrassing to critics?' (Author's introduction)
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Narrating Historical Massacre : Alex Miller’s 'Landscape of Farewell',
single work
criticism
'This article scrutinises Alex Miller’s Landscape of Farewell (2007) through the lens of massacre. It explores the troubling implications of the novel’s sustained analogy between the generational effects for Indigenous Australian perpetrators of a massacre and the children of Nazis, and questions the novel’s capacity to contribute to reconciliation, in spite of drawing upon many of reconciliation’s key tropes. Drawing on the insights of comparative Holocaust studies, this article unpacks the novel’s representation of massacre and genocide, and the subtle comparison between Indigenous belonging to country and Nazi attachment to national space. Finally, through the work of Dominick LaCapra, it scrutinises the obfuscatory representation of the perpetrator, and the novel’s seeming projection of a form of perpetrator guilt onto the Indigenous subject.' (Publication abstract)
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[Review] D. H. Lawrence’s Australia : Anxiety at the Edge of Empire,
single work
review
— Review of D. H. Lawrence's Australia : Anxiety at the Edge of Empire 2015 single work criticism ; -
[Review Essay] Patrick White Centenary : The Legacy of a Prodigal Son,
single work
single work
review
essay
— Review of Patrick White Centenary : The Legacy of a Prodigal Son 2014 anthology criticism ;'In ‘Australia’s Prodigal Son,’ John Barnes records an emblematic moment in his life: his 1988 meeting with Patrick White at La Trobe University prior to what would be the author’s final public address. Barnes recalls the overflowing crowd, the presence of TV cameras and the vociferous demands that the overflow crowd be allowed to sit in aisles or prop themselves against walls. To Barnes, the event, the size and fervor of the audience, was a milestone: ‘This was my first experience of an Australian writer being treated as a celebrity’ (3).' (Introduction)
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[Review] Shirley Hazzard : New Critical Essays,
single work
review
— Review of Shirley Hazzard : New Critical Essays 2014 anthology criticism ; -
[Review] Thea Astley : Inventing Her Own Weather,
single work
review
— Review of Thea Astley : Inventing Her Own Weather 2015 single work biography ; -
[Review] An Unsentimental Bloke : The Life and Work of C. J. Dennis,
single work
review
— Review of An Unsentimental Bloke : The Life and Works of C.J. Dennis 2014 single work biography ; -
[Review] Wild Bleak Bohemia: Marcus Clarke, Adam Lindsay Gordon and Henry Kendall. A Documentary,
single work
review
— Review of Wild Bleak Bohemia : Marcus Clarke, Adam Lindsay Gordon and Henry Kendall - A Documentary 2014 single work biography ; -
[Review] Exploring Suburbia : The Suburbs in the Contemporary Australian Novel,
single work
review
— Review of Exploring Suburbia: The Suburbs in the Contemporary Australian Novel 2012 multi chapter work criticism ; -
[Review] Entangled Subjects: Indigenous/Australian Cross-Cultures of Talk, Text, and Modernity,
single work
review
— Review of Entangled Subjects : Indigenous/Australian Cross-Cultures Of Talk, Text, And Modernity 2013 single work criticism ; -
[Review] A Companion to Australian Aboriginal Literature,
single work
review
— Review of A Companion to Australian Aboriginal Literature 2013 selected work criticism ; -
Literary Vaudeville : Lennie Lower’s Comic Journalism,
single work
criticism
'It is entirely possible that vaudeville never really died—at least not in Australia. Susan Lever, for one, has observed that vaudeville-style, self-consciously performative ‘characters’ have had a surprising afterlife in Australian culture. Against the scarcity of successful home-grown sitcoms, she notes the preference of local audiences for revue-style sketch comedy, as well as ‘character’-based variety shows centred upon such diverse comic figures as Graham Kennedy, Norman Gunston (Garry McDonald), and Roy and HG (John Doyle and Greig Pickhaver)—to which might be added Paul Hogan and Shaun Micallef. Even Jane Turner and Gina Riley’s caricatural Kath & Kim suggests that ‘the Australian taste for comedy remains firmly on the side of vaudeville’ (238).' (Introduction)
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The Sheep’s Face : Figuration, Empathy, Ethics,
single work
criticism
'The word ‘species’ is etymologically related to looking. Although its primary biological definition is that of beings that can interbreed,species can refer to things of like kind: thisrelates to the term’s Latin derivation, specere, meaning to look. Describing how things look and conveying this appearance to others (whether in writing, or in relaying a memory) typically involves the use of metaphor. This article reads a number of Australian texts in terms of interspecies relations between humans and sheep, and considers the use of metaphor—and metonymy—and the place of ethics in this relation, with a particular emphasis on the face of both human and sheep: how sheep and humans look, in both senses of the word.' (Author's introduction)
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Unsettled and Unsettling : Negotiating Reconciliation, Recognition, Reparation,
single work
criticism
'This is the first issue of JASAL to be hosted by the University of Sydney Press. It is rather late appearing and for that I apologise both to contributing authors and to readers—thank you for your patience and support. The transition offers JASAL the opportunity to work with a prestigious and supportive partner, and we look forward to a fruitful collaboration with the press.' (Introduction)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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Unsettled and Unsettling : Negotiating Reconciliation, Recognition, Reparation
2016
single work
criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 16 no. 1 2016; 'This is the first issue of JASAL to be hosted by the University of Sydney Press. It is rather late appearing and for that I apologise both to contributing authors and to readers—thank you for your patience and support. The transition offers JASAL the opportunity to work with a prestigious and supportive partner, and we look forward to a fruitful collaboration with the press.' (Introduction)
-
Unsettled and Unsettling : Negotiating Reconciliation, Recognition, Reparation
2016
single work
criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 16 no. 1 2016; 'This is the first issue of JASAL to be hosted by the University of Sydney Press. It is rather late appearing and for that I apologise both to contributing authors and to readers—thank you for your patience and support. The transition offers JASAL the opportunity to work with a prestigious and supportive partner, and we look forward to a fruitful collaboration with the press.' (Introduction)