Archive
The house of fiction in New Zealand, neither a large not crowded dwelling at the best of times, has emptied somewhat dismayingly over the past year or two with the deaths in rapid succession of four highly respected long-term tenants: Ngaio Marsh, John A. Lee, Frank Sargeson, and M.K. Joseph, the first three of whom have been in residence for almost fifty years.
... (read more)How do you get a first novel up and running? Random House has done so with a show of faith unusual amongst Australian publishers ... and faith can move mountains of books. The Last Time I Saw Mother is handsomely produced and has an equally handsome print run of 20,000. It’s been sold into the shops in numbers and its author – Manila-born Sydney-based copywriter, Arlene J. Chai – has had her name linked with Amy Tan and Jung Chang. The back cover has a brisk encomium from Bryce Courtenay, who encouraged her to write. Effective marketing indeed, although one reviewer has commented on an element of cultural cringe.
... (read more)Australia is not the science-fiction capital of the world; in fact we are probably not even on the map. This unfortunate fact would change if we could produce more writers like Paul Collins.
... (read more)Ten years ago, as I prepared to leave for three months in New York, an Australian friend resident in the USA sent a brochure about a new kind of portable typewriter which she said might be worth my buying. The machine could memorise a whole line of type which could be corrected by being viewed in sections through a panel capable of displaying sixteen letters or spaces. When I reached New York, she warned me off that model. An even better version would be available before I left town, one able to memorise an entire page.
... (read more)Quite a few years ago, when the future was far more important than the days gone by and the past hadn’t acquired that elusively seductive voice to beckon me with the urgency that it does now, I tended to be rather flippant about the notions of ‘home’ and ‘homeland’. ‘Home’ simply meant where I was at any given time. To an extent such a shallow definition can be attributed to my early experiences of travel and the consequences of the constantly changing landscape which confronted a young backpacker who didn’t feel the necessity of a cultural anchor. I simply moved from one country to another, with the restless compulsion of the Wandering Jew, to satiate a curiosity sparked off by a trip to the exotic wilderness of the Khyber Pass when I was a child.
... (read more)Wildlife film-makers Richard Southeby and his wife Nicole Vander are filming a duck hunt at Great Dismal Swamp, North Carolina, where Greenpeace demonstrators plan to make their presence felt. Their fanatical leader, Simon Rosenberg, has a flowing beard and deeply troubled eyes. His idea is to get his troops in front of the guns, really provoke the shooters and obtain maximum publicity. Remind you of anyone? But then in the early stages of filming, Nicole is blown away into the swamp by an unseen assassin. Who’s responsible? Greenpeace crazies? Duck hunters? Or an international hired hitman known as the Jaguar? You guessed right.
... (read more)The Big Ship: Warwick Armstrong and the making of modern cricket by Gideon Haigh
A Gap in Nature: Discovering the world’s extinct animals by Tim Flannery and Peter Schouten
Australia's Own Cold War: The waterfront under Menzies by Tom Sheridan
