“Dickwhipped,” grey zones and interpreting smiles. Anna Krien talking with Helen Garner at the Wheeler.

The drawing: Geordie Williamson, readhead.

‘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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

A brief list of stuff in the air and on the web I like, and you might too. The Best Live Albums, at Slate, by Bill Wyman (no, not that one). Just right, light and summery with useful reminders and suggestions. On Joni Mitchell’s Miles of Aisles: “Probably the best live album title ever, and [...]

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 [...]

My calendar had the evening pencilled in for Rai Gaita’s lecture in his Wednesday series (see here), but my heart said, go see T.J. Clark talking about art. So I turned up at the Wheeler Centre along with about 100 other folk — which surprised me because he doesn’t seem very well known here. In [...]

It’s well past the point of the political cycle that, when certain politicians speak on radio, I reach over and turn it off. That mostly means Julia et Tony; on TV if I can see it’s a pollie I’m off surfing. How did I get so intolerant, my resistance so low? I’m cultivating a slow [...]