Craig Sherborne
What would Samuel Johnson have made of sports writing? Not much, I suspect. He believed literature should strike bold notes of moral activism, of ‘Truth’ with a capital T, be an edifier, not merely entertainment. That’s asking a lot of sports writing. Or it may just be asking a lot of Australian sports writing. I mention Johnson only because I happened to be reading his Lives of the English ... (read more)
Dawn Fraser had a hundred or so pages of fair prose in her and she put them in this book, her autobiography. The trouble is that the book is 400 pages long. But that’s not a bad result. If a David Malouf or Helen Garner lined up for an Olympic swimming final, you’d expect them to sink.
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I put away my eyes for the night.I forget dreams,perhaps I don’t have them any more,not close at hand.I’m not book-sick from the gloomy others.I haven’t read a word in years.In me, drink-nettles – I’ve a glass with the same stings,and ice which comes out as clear sweat onthis side of my skin,the right-way-up for drying.
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The only organised crime boss I ever knew was Perce Galea, in the mid1970s. He owned illegal casinos and raced thoroughbreds. ‘Colourful racing identity’, the polite broadsheets called him. My dad raced horses too and would go to Randwick at dawn to watch them work. I’d tag along on Saturdays and there Perce would be – Windsor-knotted tie, brown cashmere long-coat, and porkpie hat – stra ... (read more)
Clive James is a fussy A-grade mechanic of the English language, always on the lookout for grammatical misfires or sloppiness of phrasing that escape detection on publishing production lines. Us/we crashtest dummies of the written word, who drive by computer, with squiggly red and green underlinings on the screen to help us steer, should therefore expect perfection in James’s own work, and pounc ... (read more)