Michael Guest

The Australian Bicentennial Arts Program has been documented in a collection of review articles recently published by Mead and Beckett. It is a record not only of the wide range of arts activities throughout the year but also of some of the issues which confronted the artists involved. No, it is not an Aborigine on the front of the Australian Bicentennial Authority’s 1988 Reviews (edited by Sar ... (read more)

Critically reviewing a populist genre novel requires a particular cribbing, a playing off against deep-seated transcendental notions of literature that tend to motivate pronouncements upon the relatively good and bad points. One needs to co-opt some of the modish, culturally oriented, intellectualist and anti-canonical values, both to legitimise the project – assuming that is required – and t ... (read more)

The small magazine is the sign of postmodern diversity. How this diversity works itself out in literary production can be seen in the range of magazines available today.   One is tempted to view the proliferation of the small Australian literary magazine as a postmodern development. Few these days will turn a hair at the use of that term, previously confined to the domain of abstruse theori ... (read more)