Josh Wilson

What the hell is Bob Ellis? Discuss. Ellis might put it like this himself. Chances are he’s asked the question of a street window once or twice in wonderment and mock self-mockery. He’s earned it. From the back-cover blurbs down the years, one has got, by way of label, ‘l’enfant terrible of Australian culture’ (The Inessential Ellis, 1992), ‘a kind of dusty national icon’ (Goodbye Ba ... (read more)

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War stories are never extrinsic to war. The us-and-them plots, domino theories and governing metaphors, the operational jargon and vast naming schemes, even the post-hoc synopses (we won, we should have won, another win like that and we’re finished): these are not patterns laid over something real; they stream from the enabling code. Between 1966 and 1971 the Australian Task Force Vietnam admin ... (read more)