With the frantic busyness of work, and the preparations for both Perth Writers Festival (this week) and the Format Festival Academy of Words (in Adelaide, in a few weeks) I’m a bit behind in Blogland. I’ve been reading plenty but have had no time to write up reviews, and I haven’t sent out much to guest reviewers, [...]
Monthly Archives: February 2010
Soul-scorching voyage (bring it on!)
February 18, 2010 – 5:26 pm
This is absolutely the best article I’ve read for a while on contemporary issues in writing – the way it’s talked about, taught, and so on: ‘A Writing Career Becomes Harder to Scale’, by Dani Shapiro. Shapiro says: ‘the decisive factor is what I call endurability: that is, the ability to deal effectively with uncertainty, [...]
A Valentine to writing (and the moment)
February 14, 2010 – 3:50 pm
I want to say: don’t make yourself small. Then, the temptation to make your world bigger when it should be honed. Other people’s pain that will become stories. Pain to come. People picking things off you, and censorship (it’s not about you). (We will always make it about ourselves – that writer has seen behind the [...]
Guest review: Lyndon Riggall on Stephen King’s Under the Dome
February 11, 2010 – 7:33 am
9780340992579 Hodder 2009 (Aus, US) I sometimes wonder when Stephen King will stop. Having published more than 150 books, it’s hard not to wonder when the ideas will dry up. What’s next Stephen, a killer broom monster? A giant ribbon that wraps itself around its victims and strangles them of life? A giant dome that [...]
Speaking of…
February 7, 2010 – 6:05 pm
The literary-minded in Melbourne need never be bored. The Wheeler Centre for Books, Writing and Ideas will begin filling our lunch breaks and evenings this month. Here’s the program for the first three months. I’ll be getting along to see Helen Garner, and I love the idea of the Lunchbox/Soapbox sessions which allow you to [...]
Guest review: Elena Gomez on Janine Burke’s Source: Nature’s Healing Role in Art and Writing
February 5, 2010 – 8:00 am
Allen & Unwin November 2009 (Aus) 9781741759177 The meticulous research that went into this book is a testament to renowned art historian Janine Burke’s passion for art and its influences. In Source, she explores the resonating impact of nature and environment on the works of various writers and artists of the modern era. I have [...]
Eleanor Catton’s The Rehearsal
February 2, 2010 – 8:03 am
Granta 2009 (Aus/NZ, US) 9781847081162 All the world’s a stage… A novel as a performance, more – a novel as flirtation (the performance of flirting): self-conscious, inviting yet exclusive. The reader is all the roles, all the characters and all the actors – for in The Rehearsal there are layers of fictional existence – blended, [...]
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Perth Writers Festival 2010 diary, part one: ‘mint’ ideas
We live ‘by and through and for ideas’ said AC Grayling at last night’s opening address. But the majority of ideas that we possess, that have shaped us - the way we see and react to the world - are unconscious or at least unexamined. Spinoza said that freedom came from making the ‘inadequate’ ideas ‘adequate’, that [...]