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Brian Matthews Brian Matthews i(A29099 works by) (a.k.a. Brian Ernest Matthews)
Born: Established: 1936 St Kilda, Caulfield - St Kilda area, Melbourne - Inner South, Melbourne, Victoria, ;
Gender: Male
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Works By

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1 The Satisfaction of Homeliness Brian Matthews , 2021 single work autobiography
— Appears in: Eureka Street , 26 September vol. 31 no. 19 2021;

'The advertisement is brief, almost cryptic: ‘Ron’s Cleaning. SAPOL registered. Fully equipped. Reasonable rates, twenty years’ experience.’ It sits alongside three other more flourishing, colourful and elaborately designed offers awaiting a click of the mouse to reveal their wonders. A quick random choice from these three reveals a well-known, thoroughly commercial outfit. I decide — for no reason that I could clearly detail — to ring Ron.' (Introduction)

1 Tying Off the Threads of Doubt Brian Matthews , 2021 single work essay
— Appears in: Eureka Street , 1 August vol. 31 no. 15 2021;

'In times of unexpected or inexplicable crisis, humans all over the globe regardless of race, religion, lineage or historical evidence, will often turn to myth, the occult, each other, to their until then untested and unimpressive leaders, or to a hoped-for apparent miracle to explain what seemed otherwise beyond explanation.' (Introduction)

1 Mates, Spies and Silence Brian Matthews , 2021 single work essay
— Appears in: Eureka Street , 28 March vol. 31 no. 6 2021;

'This article is a follow up to Brian Matthew’s previous column.

'The military police were waiting for us in Gallipoli and they were not happy. Approaching in darkness, when we rolled to a stop we were immediately surrounded by uniformed figures. A group of men playing cards outside a café watched this drama unfold and one shouted something which made them all laugh. The military police, however, did not laugh.' (Introduction)

1 Crossing Borders in a Kombi Van Brian Matthews , 2021 single work essay
— Appears in: Eureka Street , 15 February vol. 31 no. 3 2021;
1 The Romance of the Song Brian Matthews , 2020 single work column
— Appears in: Eureka Street , 4 October vol. 30 no. 20 2020;
1 Finding Fragments of a Father Brian Matthews , 2020 single work essay
— Appears in: Eureka Street , 28 June vol. 30 no. 13 2020;
1 Crossing the Tasman : Five New Zealanders Explore the 'West Island' Brian Matthews , 2019 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , December no. 417 2019; (p. 41-42)

— Review of West Island : Five Twentieth-century New Zealanders in Australia Stephanie Johnson , 2019 multi chapter work criticism biography
'Australians and New Zealanders know it as the Tasman Sea or more familiarly The Ditch: for Māori, Te Tai o-Rēhua. Significant islands in this stretch of water are Lord Howe and Norfolk. As seen from New Zealand, the island most Australians probably don’t know offhand and, when they are told about it, might feel inclined to reject its name as, well, cheeky: it’s West Island – Australia in short.' (Introduction)
1 The Sometimes Ironic Perception of 'Things' Brian Matthews , 2019 single work review
— Appears in: Eureka Street , 28 July vol. 29 no. 15 2019;

— Review of The Gang of One : Selected Poems of Robert Harris Robert Harris , 2019 selected work poetry
'As a general rule, poets don't have much time for administration and its discontents and Alan Wearne, the award winning author of among other narrative poems, The Nightmarkets and The Lovemakers, runs pretty much true to poetic form. Referring to the mission statement of his brain child, Grand Parade Poets, he concedes parenthetically that 'mission statement' is a 'dreadful term', but quotes it anyway.' 

 (Introduction)

1 Echoes of Auschwitz in Manus Memoir Brian Matthews , 2019 single work column
— Appears in: Eureka Street , 24 March vol. 29 no. 6 2019; (p. 43-46)

'In July 2016 I contributed a piece on Primo Levi to Eureka Street. I briefly referred to Levi's Auschwitz incarceration, his brilliance as a scientist - his The Periodic Table was short-listed by the London Royal Institution as a candidate for the best scientific book ever written - and his untimely death. Whether tragic accident or suicide will never be known.' (Introduction)

1 A Crash Course in Climate Literacy Brian Matthews , 2018 single work column
— Appears in: Eureka Street , 21 October vol. 28 no. 21 2018;

'In the old days, the balladists and poets recorded fire, flood and drought. Fire was dramatic, swift and very dangerous. In Henry Lawson's 'The Fire at Ross's Farm', the blaze 'leapt across the flowing streams/ And raced o'er pastures broad/ It climbed the trees and lit the boughs/ And through the scrubs it roared. / The bees fell stifled in the smoke/ Or perished in their hives,/ And with the stock the kangaroos/ Went flying for their lives.'' (Introduction)

1 The Audacious Bite of Decision' : Hydra's Cast of Characters Brian Matthews , 2018 single work essay
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , November no. 406 2018; (p. 35-36)

'In August 1964, Charmian Clift returned to Australia from the Greek island of Hydra after nearly fourteen years abroad. As Paul Genoni and Tanya Dalziell portray her return – a description based, as always in this book, on solid or at least reasonably persuasive evidence – she ‘was leaving her beloved Hydra forever, with the pain of her departure sharpened by the sting of humiliation and exile’. By the time the return voyage had begun, she later recalled, ‘the audacious bite of decision has long since been blunted … The freshness of the adventure has worn off and uncertainty, alas, is practically all that remains.’' (Introduction)

1 Painting into the Eye of the Light : Evoking Bernard Smith Brian Matthews , 2018 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , October no. 405 2018; (p. 53-54)

'The editors begin their introduction to Antipodean Perspective with some ground clearing: ‘The putting together of a series of responses to an important scholar’s work is a classic academic exercise. It is undoubtedly a worthy, but also necessarily a selective undertaking. In German it is called a Festschrift …’ The Festschrift continues to be, in academic circles especially, a way of honouring the work, contribution, influence, and originality of this or that scholar or, sometimes, of a university librarian or outstanding teacher.'  (Introduction)

1 'Cocooned in His Own Silence' : Rodney Hall's Outstanding Return to Fiction Brian Matthews , 2018 single work essay
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , April no. 400 2018; (p. 52-53)

'Of the now twelve novels that make up Rodney Hall’s distinguished prose fiction – ranging from The Ship on the Coin (1972) to this year’s A Stolen Season – it is arguably in the latter that the task of remaking is most explicitly and adventurously undertaken, even literally in the case of Adam Griffiths. As an Australian soldier fighting with the ‘Coalition of the Willing’, Adam has been shockingly wounded: he is ‘helpless and isolated’. ‘Cocooned in his own silence’. Now, with his young wife, Bridget, who, in edge-of-panic reflection, muses ‘she ought never to have married him in the first place’, Adam, smashed, burnt, ‘ought to have died’, navigates the pain-racked hours, tortured step by step, with the robotic help of his exoskeleton, ‘the Contraption’. Like Viktor Frankenstein, Bridget recognises that she is in thrall to a monster: ‘He is her monstrosity, hers and hers alone.’ (Introduction)

1 Johnno Vs the Bloody Banks Brian Matthews , 2017 single work prose
— Appears in: Eureka Street , 19 November vol. 27 no. 23 2017;
1 Butterfly Nuts Brian Matthews , 2017 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , November no. 396 2017; (p. 31)

— Review of A Sea-Chase Roger McDonald , 2017 single work novel

'As Ratty observed to Mole, ‘There is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.’ In Roger McDonald’s A Sea-Chase, lovers Wes Bannister and Judy Compton would certainly agree, but before they achieve Ratty’s state of nautical transcendence much that does matter has to be dealt with.' (Introduction)

1 Not Quite the Book He Wanted : Portrait of a Colonising and Ruthless Father Brian Matthews , 2017 single work essay
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , September no. 394 2017; (p. 34-35)

'When some years ago I read Jim Davidson’s outstanding biography, Lyrebird Rising (1994), I was initially concerned by what seemed to be his potentially distorting fascination with the scene-stealing Louise Hanson-Dyer. But I soon discovered I needn’t have worried. Jim Davidson is not the sort of biographer whose obsession with his subject overcomes proportion. On the contrary, his sense of humour, his alertness to the fallible, the ridiculous, and the noble reinforce rather than compete with his respect for, and absorption in, the recorded life. A style full of elegance, wit, and, when called for, irony, ranging from gentle to corrosive, constantly works sharply against any temptation to be over-impressed. In A Führer for a Father, however, this armoury is strained to its limits.' (Introduction)

1 Nearly Knowing John Clarke Brian Matthews , 2017 single work essay
— Appears in: Eureka Street , 4 June vol. 27 no. 11 2017; (p. 17)

'Maybe it was because I'd just been discussing Bram Stoker's Dracula, but when I was introduced to Murray Bramwell — he was a postgraduate student just arrived from New Zealand, I was a lecturer in English — I said, 'Welcome Bram'. Not a disastrous gaffe and Murray quickly and amiably helped me to make the adjustment but it looked for an instant as if I was cheekily but clumsily trying to invert his entire name (Welbram?) and this was enough to cause me a severe attack of the blushes to which my doggedly tan-resistant pallor succumbed in those youthful days with embarrassing alacrity.' (Introduction)

1 Unorthodox Approach : A Daring Biography of a Remarkable Woman Brian Matthews , 2017 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , March no. 389 2017; (p. 16,17)
In the summer of 1988 I was part of an Adelaide Writers Week symposium on biography, the stars of which were two justly famous and accomplished biographers – Victoria Glendinning and Andrew Motion...' (Introduction)
1 Memory Theory Brian Matthews , 2016 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , August no. 383 2016; (p. 71)

— Review of Growing Wild Michael Wilding , 2016 single work autobiography
1 Hearing the Splash : The Stately Seriousness of Shirley Hazzard Brian Matthews , 2016 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , May no. 381 2016; (p. 12-13)

— Review of We Need Silence to Find Out What We Think : Selected Essays Shirley Hazzard , 2016 selected work essay
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