November 30, 2010 – 10:14 am
Knob — a seven foot high, nine-footed beast topped with an enormous bulbous mass covered in fine, fine hair. That bulging black knob caps firmly nine long, transparent legs, washed in delicate veils of blue-black ink, as finely drawn and sure, and elegant, as a line by Donald Friend. It is strange, it is amazing, [...]
November 26, 2010 – 7:06 pm
Of course, this person who shall remain unnamed (that’s you, John) says to me at the opening, She is being very unfashionable, it’s not about politics and it’s not conceptually based; this is just about painting. The “it” is the knockout show “Inventory,” a group of nine large paintings, sprinkled with a bunch of smaller [...]
November 26, 2010 – 12:44 pm
This is the Mulcher sketch of singer Ali McGregor, one of the lively panellists at the recording of the Book Show’s program on what musicians read, broadcast today. (The Reading on Vocation series, which has covered gardeners; nuns, scientists, filmmakers, captains of industry (was there one on pirates?), doctors and lawyers. Hear them on podcast.) [...]
November 24, 2010 – 10:46 am
‘To lose one editor is a misfortune; but to lose two or three, damned careless.’ Jim Davidson paraphrased Oscar Wilde in last night’s commemorative lecture for Meanjin‘s 70th anniversary. The opposite of a sentimental stroll down memory lane, the talk, A Cork Upon the Ocean: Meanjin and the Changing Context, 1940-2010, was a focused survey [...]
November 23, 2010 – 11:28 am
I don’t know how it came up but at some point towards dessert, the Book Show’s Ramona Koval offered me the recipe for her Bubba’s Birthday Sponge. Bubba being Yiddish for grandma, that’s really birthday cake for the littlies. (Ah, yes, she had asked what I was doing the next day, which was last Friday [...]
November 17, 2010 – 10:06 pm
Because I can, I’m naming Lloyd Jones’ Hand Me Down World as my favourite manuscript of the year. (How’s that for an uncommon list-making category?) I think it’s extraordinary. Now that it’s published, the Guardian has tagged along: ‘This is, to make a bold claim, an extraordinary novel.’ So extraordinary, the classic Canadian rockers The [...]
November 16, 2010 – 11:00 am
I’m struggling to restrain another piece from balloning, festooning into an essay — on that age-old, timelessly tedious topic of books going e-. So I’m going to offer a far more delicious, and still booky, distraction, in the form of Ron Charles. Ron Charles, deputy editor of the Washington Post‘s Book World, may be my [...]
November 11, 2010 – 11:30 am
People hate rate rises = Politicians hate rate rises People hate banks = Politicians hate banks People hate politicians = Politicians hate RBA Banks love money = Banks love rate rises People love money = People love banks A Venn diagram Oh, Joe! Wayne! Save us from capitalism! Show Big Banks how to compete like [...]
November 11, 2010 – 11:10 am
We visited the Australian War Memorial earlier in the year. It’s a tremendous work in progress (alas). And at certain intersections with it I did feel moved, a soft summer wind stirring the poppies on the wall.
November 9, 2010 – 9:39 am
Her name is Ree Dolly, and her address is Winter’s Bone. As a movie, Winter’s Bone is the kind that kills chatter, providing the deep, disturbing pleasures of American gothic. It was filmed within an Ozark community — that’s hillbillies, bluegrass country, finger-plucking banjos. Ah, banjos … we know where that is: And, pedantically, we’d [...]
