Simon Caterson

Relatively few Australians possess a criminal record, but virtually everyone in this country leads a vicarious life of crime. The greater part of our popular culture is pervaded by crime in inverse proportion to the rate of actual offending. Law and order is a sensitive political topic right now, yet at the same time never has the criminal world held such sway over the popular imagination. The bul ... (read more)

‘Anyone who’s not a misanthrope by the time he’s forty has never felt the slightest affection for the human race.’ It was apparently at this time of life that Nicolas-Sébastien Roch de Chamfort (1740–94) began jotting down his thoughts, reflections and anecdotes. As the above sample indicates, Chamfort’s life of excess and disappointment had equipped him with a heightened sensitivity ... (read more)

One of the contestants on television’s Australian Princess last year was a stripper, the oscillation in whose carriage was queried by the judges. ‘Of course I wiggle when I walk,’ the young woman protested, ‘I’ve got booty.’ Another competitor found that the going got tough when she was called upon to make a cup of tea. ‘I’m more of a bourbon girl,’ she shrugged. We were meant to ... (read more)

One of the phrases used by the Swedish Academy to describe J.M. Coetzee, winner of this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature, is ‘scrupulous doubter’. In his novels, memoirs, essays, lectures and academic criticism, Coetzee conveys the uncertainty and complexity of lived experience with extraordinary precision and, sometimes, with a clarity that is almost unbearable. Coetzee’s work is triumpha ... (read more)