An evening with J.M. Coetzee

ABR (in association with La Trobe University and the City of Melbourne) is delighted to be able to invite all our readers, but especially our subscribers, to what promises to be one of our major events for the year, when the masterly novelist and critic J.M. Coetzee will read from his work. This rare opportunity for Victorians to hear the Nobel Laureate and author of Disgrace and Life and Times of Michael K will take place at the Melbourne Town Hall at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, August 4 (we suggest you arrive at 5.30 to ensure you get a seat). Full details appear on page 5. This is a free event. La Trobe University will also confer the degree of Doctor of Letters (honoris causa) on J.M. Coetzee during his visit to Melbourne.

The sound and the fury

Reviewing, some doubters might say, is a mug’s game: underpaid, vulnerable to editorial whims and less cosmically influential than some reviewers (and some sensitive authors) believe. We at ABR maintain, as you might expect, that forthright criticism is central, not secondary, to a healthy literary culture. But it is a changing genre, and questions can be asked about its present independence and vitality. Peter Rose (Editor of ABR) proposes to test some of them in a workshop at the Victorian Writers’ Centre on Saturday, August 7. (For more details, contact the VWC on 03 9654 9068.) Peter Rose will address related themes when he delivers the 2004 Barry Andrews Lecture at 5.30 p.m. on Wednesday, September 8. The title of his lecture is ‘The Sound and the Fury: Uneasy Times for Hacks and Critics’. The venue, not altogether inaptly, is the Military Theatre at the Australian Defence Force Academy, Canberra.