Australian Literature
Survey | Kerryn Goldsworthy reviews the 1987 National Book Council Awards for Australian Literature shortlist
‘If you can’t say something nice,’ my mother always said, ‘don’t say anything at all.’ (I pinch this opening gambit, shamelessly, from Kate Grenville’s Self-Portrait in the last ABR, and hope she does not mind; imitation is the sincerest form etc.) Apropos of parental expectations regarding niceness-or-silence, however, I am reminded of a remark of Elizabeth Jolley’s: ‘I think my mother wanted a princess, and she got me instead.’
... (read more)The Australian Stage edited by Harold Love & Reverses by Marcus Clarke, edited by Dennis Davison
The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature edited by William H. Wilde, Joy Hooton, and Barry Andrews
Australian Writers: An illustrated guide to their lives and work by Graeme Kinross-Smith
While the reading of a book has become a solitary matter, its interpretation remains a convivial task which must be performed anew for each new reader, new age, and new country. The business of criticism is to help us in this task, and from a multitude of judgements to further our understanding of an author’s words for our time. The critic is therefore involved not only with books, but through them with the cultural problems of his society. Critical debates thus become debates about major social issues.
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