Richard Watts

Making Noises is the second self-published novel from Melbourne author Euan Mitchell, and follows in the footsteps of his best-selling début, Feral Tracks (1998). Like Feral Tracks, Mitchell’s new book is partially inspired by his own life experiences, in particular his time spent playing in pub bands and working at Ausmusic. On one level a satirical novel about politics and power in the Austr ... (read more)

Australian author Max Barry specialises in satirising the profit-obsessed world of corporate enterprise in his sharply observed, easily digestible novels, of which Company is his third. Syrup, his first book, published in 1999, told the story of Scat, a character whose name more than broadly hinted at the author’s jaundiced view of the career he had previously been engaged in (Barry was a salesm ... (read more)

In one of the most famous, free-flowing and deceptively careless paragraphs in his second novel, On The Road (1957), Jack Kerouac (1922–69) writes with disarming honesty about his relationship with ‘Dean Moriarty’ (Neal Cassady) and ‘Carlo Marx’ (Allen Ginsberg), each of whom would later become, like Kerouac himself, central figures in the mythology of the ‘Beat Generation’: ... (read more)