The Christmas party season is in full swing. I’ve forgotten names, drank too much, jumped on a trampoline, been told secrets, held hands with sweaty strangers (swing dancing), stuttered (kinda a new one) and swapped WIP stories with emerging and published writers. There’s a lot of pressure to be in the know. To have read [...]
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PHILOSOPHY
Don DeLillo’s Point Omega
Point Omega Don DeLillo Picador, 2010, 9780330512381 (Aus, US/Kindle) I’ve been ‘doing’ a few American writers of late. Loved my first encounter with Michael Chabon, in A Model World – he’s a master of beginnings and endings in those short gems – and will follow-up someday with The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and [...]
READ MORETurbulence
A conversation with the self: ‘Here we go.’ ‘Of course.’ ‘It’s normal, don’t worry’. ‘But this swoop in my chest!’ ‘It’s just anxiety, you’re dizzy, it’s nothing. It’s just a bit windy out.’ ‘But what of this pressure. I have no control. I can’t feel my face. Oh God.’ ‘When you think about it, it [...]
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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 [...]
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This cumulative kind of effect when you stop: an interview with Emily Maguire on Smoke in the Room, part one
In Smoke in the Room (Aus), three characters end up in a share house in Sydney. Katie works on instinct and is weighted by an overwhelming empathy. Adam, an American, is grieving and needs to save money to get home. Graeme, an aid worker, has rid himself of possessions and simplified his existence. In this [...]
READ MOREAdventures of the badge with the face of Albert Camus #1
Shop assistant: Who’s that? Me: Albert Camus. SA: Who? Me: He’s a philosopher. SA: What? Me: A philosopher. *shop assistant stares blankly* Me: He’s a writer. SA: Oh. Does he write poetry? Me: No. SA: What does he write? Me: Philosophy, fiction. *very long pause* SA: Ha,ha, I’m such an airhead!
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Literary Space – Damon Young
Damon Young, author of Distraction, says: My study is actually one corner of our lounge. The room’s also an office for my wife Ruth, entertaining wing, tearoom, and playroom for my three-year-old-son, Nikos. It’s part writerly den, part Lego wonderland. When our new baby’s born, it’ll also be a nursery. And, yes, the pram [...]
READ MOREA Very Short Introduction to the Absurd, My Absurd Moment, and Lester Burnham as Absurd Hero…
Albert Camus The Myth of Sisyphus was one of those books I attacked with dog-ears and pen marks. Whole pages are underlined in my well-thumbed copy, which I revisited when writing my novel manuscript Smoke & Dancing, and recently for my thesis. I think about my own steps to lucidity, when I acknowledged life’s inherent [...]
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