Rightho — this is something I should have done a couple of weeks back. It’s a heads up for a (free) talk I’m giving on book cover design, specifically on the Text Classics series, Australian classics, rather than from o/s. You can see the thirty covers here, and hopefully you’ll have seen them (yellow: Aussie [...]
‘Robert Dessaix’, the performance The other night at the Wheeler Centre, where I seemed to have camped out lately, we saw the celebrated writer Robert Dessaix take the stage for one of his brilliantly sly and penetrating performances. By penetrating I mean how he seems to cut into the moment — loosing the sap? the [...]
March 30, 2012 – 10:53 am
Yesterday evening a large crowd at the Wheeler Centre was treated to an exemplary lecture on the crucial masterpiece by that fugitive great of Australian literature, Christina Stead (1902-1983). Like so many of her ilk — arts leaning proto-bohos — in that earlier time she had high-tailed it out of the lowlands of Australia to [...]
March 20, 2012 – 10:02 am
Adorable little beast “Your little rag of a girl is a most adorable little beast…and the way it is done is wonderful; I do not think that particular thing could have been done better.” — H.G. Wells to Henry Handel Richardson on Laura in The Getting of Wisdom. In the second session of the Wheeler [...]
Yes, ok, the headline is trolling. Alternatively, it might have been: The Return of the Cringe It might make trouble no matter how it’s contextualised. But it’s what he said — check it out on their video page next week; it should be posted by then. Yes, we have no classics The who is the [...]
Last Friday evening, at the storied old Athenaeum theatre the Wheeler Centre hosted an interview with one of the glitteringest stars of Britlit, over here for various writers festivals and to promote his latest book, The Stranger’s Child. Michael Williams, director of the Wheeler (see left) and interlocutor for the evening: Before he is even [...]
February 28, 2012 – 10:40 am
The estimable Henry Rosenbloom, publisher of Scribe, has posted a blog sung in a key of passionate blue (pardon the purple). He’s a great believer in transparency, and here he is exposing the entrails of the crisis that our book trade is undergoing — and everyone gets to share in the pain. Authors, book printers, [...]
December 9, 2011 – 11:04 am
Extraordinary scenes in the city yesterday, in the old Georges shop on Collins Street. The crush was in the hundreds, quite possible a thousand people, jovially pushing themselves among shelves, swigging wine, and astonishingly — queueing with abandon, in the flesh, each toting several actual object-books to the cashier. And by queue: it went half [...]
August 24, 2011 – 11:10 am
From a New Yorker cartoon. Picture two straw-chewing, cockeyed hobos perched on a wall. Hobo 1 to hobo 2:“Crazy busy. You?” How does a witness on oath in court give a sensible answer as to her location on a date say a year ago? It’s hard to remember last week, impossible to recall a day [...]
By W H Chong
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Also posted in art, drawings, movies, music, photography, wheeler centre
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Tagged aboriginal art, Ballarat, Beethove, Foto Biennale, Jason Greig, Jessica Au, Juan Davila, Konrad Winkler, Mapplethorpe, MUMA, MWF, Namatjira, Randy Newman, Sophie Cunningham
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An official announcement happens tonight, but I can reveal my result* now. The winner of the Mens’ Franklin Award for 2011 is: Chris Womersley for Bereft. [update below] Congratulations, Chris, for a great effort, and only your second novel! (*A note on the methodology: This decision is based on the principle of the recently institution-sanctioned [...]
