Ken Gelder
Ken Gelder is a Professor of English at the University of Melbourne who specialises in Australian literature and popular fiction. With Jane M. Jacobs, he co-authored Uncanny Australia: Sacredness and Identity in a Postcolonial Nation (Melbourne University Press, 1998). His most recent books include Colonial Australian Fiction: Character Types, Social Formations and the Colonial Economy (Sydney University Press, 2017) and The Colonial Kangaroo Hunt (Miegunyah Press, 2020), both co-authored with Rachael Weaver, as well as Adapting Bestsellers: Fantasy, Franchise and the Afterlife of Storyworlds (Cambridge University Press, 2019).
I first came across the name of Eric Michaels through a review article he published in the journal Art & Text titled ‘Para-Ethnography’. The article rigorously critiqued Chatwin’s The Songlines and Sally Morgan’s My Place, situating them as ‘para-ethnographic’ texts. It was very impressive. The note at the end remarked that ‘Eric died on 24 August 1988 after a long period of illn ... (read more)
Last December, the Melbourne Age asked some prominent literary folk to name the best novel of the twentieth century. Readers would have found few surprises in the choices. Most of the punter – some novelist and a few literary critics – went for Proust’s Remembrance and Joyce’s Ulysses. Little argument there. But Ian Rankin, a Scottish crime fiction writer, chose something altogether differ ... (read more)
More than anything else, The Secret of Hanging Rock is an exercise in marketing strategies and packaging. The real question, what happened to the girls, is in the midst of this finally of little importance, although it could have been very important. Indeed, the final, previously unpublished chapter of Picnic at Hanging Rock is only one of four pieces of writing in the publishers’ package, each ... (read more)