There is a quality in James Ellroy’s fiction that evades analysis and exceeds his popular status as a successful author in the ‘crime genre’. This quality is in part connected to his demanding narratives, which inevitably leave one with the nagging feeling that there is a great deal one has failed to understand, and which prompt (often multiple) re-readings of his novels; but it is also conn ... (read more)
Christian Griffiths
Christian Griffiths is a PhD candidate in literary studies at Monash University. His research focuses on the interdisciplinary relationships between music and literature. He has recently co-edited a special issue on this theme for Australian Literary Studies, which was released in March 2015.
Patrick Holland’s Navigatio tells the story of Saint Brendan, a monk in early-Christian Ireland who embarks on a sea-bound pilgrimage. The religious nature of this premise offers Holland a degree of freedom from historical realism, and the oceanic regions explored by Brendan are thereby conceived as a realm of mythic and apocalyptic imagination. Brendan’s own pious heroism appears to be modell ... (read more)