Georgina Arnott

Film | Theatre | Art | Opera | Music | Television | Festivals

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Meanwhile, the ABR Arts e-newsletter, published every second Tuesday, will keep you up-to-date as to our recent arts reviews.

Recent reviews

The Unknown Judith Wright by Georgina Arnott

by Ian Donaldson •

November 2016, no. 386

Ian Donaldson reviews 'The Unknown Judith Wright' by Georgina Arnott

Literary biographers and their intended subjects at times agree and at times disagree about the stories they think should be told. J.D. Salinger and Vladimir Nabokov – the one, fastidious ...

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The Danger Game by Kalinda Ashton

by Georgina Arnott •

December 2009–January 2010, no. 317

If you believe the hyperbole surrounding her novel – Christos Tsiolkas has pronounced it ‘masterful, poignant, powerful and true’ – Kalinda Ashton is, at thirty-one, her generation’s answer to Helen Garner: a novelist of everyday Melbourne who makes sad, daily truths pleasurable to read because her writing is so easy to consume.

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The Sleepers Almanac, No. 5 edited by Zoe Dattner and Louise Swinn & New Australian Stories by Aviva Tuffield

by Georgina Arnott •

April 2009, no. 310

What makes a good short story? Zoe Dattner and Louise Swinn, editors of the fifth Sleepers Almanac, say there is no objective measure of quality; that everyone likes something different; and that they simply choose what appeals. As I sit down with their funky-looking volume, I don’t want to believe it. If that is the case, there is no place for literary critics, no real justification for academic literary study, and the premise for an editor’s judgement is shaky. Why should what they like matter particularly?

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Indigo 1 edited by Donna Ward

by Georgina Arnott •

October 2007, no. 295

More than a journal, Indigo represents a vibrant creative writing movement based around the Fremantle Arts Centre. Submissions are accepted from those who currently reside in Western Australia or who have lived there for at least ten years. But why start a journal for Western Australian writing alone? Is there something distinctive about Western Australian experience? Certainly, the way sandgropers see themselves in relation to the rest of Australia suggests this, and editor Donna Ward’s claim that there is ‘something distinctively Western Australian filtering through the short stories in this volume’ appears true, difficult though it is to quantify.

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Famous Reporter edited by Ralph Wessman et al. (eds) & Etchings edited by Sabine Hopfer, Christopher Lappas and Patrick Allington

by Georgina Arnott •

February 2007, no. 288

Here we have one brand new literary journal, Etchings, and one which, by comparison, is practically geriatric: Famous Reporter. There is now a proliferation of literary journals, and SPUNC (Small Press Underground Networking Community) has emerged to advance their cause. We know that mainstream publishing is producing less diverse material, and that it is increasingly not Australian. The vast majority of publishing in Australia, as Michael Wilding has highlighted, is now done by local branches of big transnational corporations. Malcolm Knox has revealed the ‘governing management principles’ of such organisations. These include ‘segmentation and internal competition’: whereas in the past a publisher subsidised ‘book sections’, now a publisher will say ‘each of these books is a discrete unit and is at war with each other unit, and if the CSIRO Diet Book does well, we will reward the diet books section with the money to repeat that success. And if the poets continue to languish, we’ll have no more poetry.’ Poetry, of course, was effectively given the flick by mainstream publishers Penguin and OUP in the 1990s. As Mark Davis says, publishers are now akin to gamblers who ‘back winners’. This may always have been true, but now they’re putting more money on the favourites and none on the roughies. In this environment, literary journals that publish poetry are crucial to maintaining a diverse local literary culture.

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Switched On: Conversations with influential women in the Australian media by Catherine Hanger

by Georgina Arnott •

October 2006, no. 285

Georgina Arnott reviews 'Switched On: Conversations with influential women in the Australian media' by Catherine Hanger

Switched On showcases the careers of twenty-nine ‘influential’ women who work in the media. Catherine Hanger, interviewer and former editor of Vogue Australia, believes that Switched On ‘connects two major spheres of influence in our society – the media and the women who work in it’ – and argues that the influence of these women is ‘very powerful indeed’. While the title promises ‘conversations’, Hanger, strangely, omits her questions. Perhaps she asked just one: ‘How did you become editor of Australian Women’s Weekly/an SBS news presenter/a film reviewer/a PR adviser to PBL/host of Media Watch?’

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Tasting Life Twice: Conversations with remarkable writers by Ramona Koval

by Georgina Arnott •

June–July 2005, no. 272

Tasting Life Twice: Conversations with remarkable writers

Tasting Life Twice is a collection of twenty-six interviews conducted by Ramona Koval over the past ten years at literary festivals, on radio programmes and in the homes of such writers as Les Murray, Morris West and Joseph Heller. Any randomly selected shortlist of these writers would impress among them are Toni Morrison, Michael Ondaatje and P.D. James, and some who have recently passed away: Saul Bellow, Susan Sontag and Malcolm Bradbury. Koval, of Radio National’s Books and Writing, is passionate about books and ideas, informing us in the introduction that her interviews revolve around ‘questions of how one evaluates a life, the getting of wisdom, facing death, the meaning of love, and whether a book ever changed the course of history’.

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