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‘Love is a madness most discreet’: The Red and the Black, A Chronicle of 1830 by Stendhal

Stendhal’s dazzling, fast-paced The Red and the Black: A Chronicle of 1830is one of my all-time favourite novels. It’s written with an urgency that’s still palpable, almost 200 years on.

The Red and the Black was published in France in 1830, some 15 years after the fall from power of Napoleon Bonaparte, Stendhal’s lifelong hero. The novel is a fierce attack on France following Napoleon’s demise, the story of a young man determined to find heroism in those vacuous days, and a lament for heroic times gone by:

‘Since the fall of Napoleon, any appearance of gallantry has been strictly banned from provincial mores … Boredom has become acute. The only pleasures are reading and agriculture.’ ... read more

Written by Jane Gleeson-White on 23-02-2012, 2 user comments

Infrared

Infrared
Nancy Huston
Text

Now, I am a fan of Nancy Huston, and I want to get that straight off the bat before I get into a discussion of her most recent novel, Infrared. She’s had a successful career prior to its publication, and was nominated for an Orange Prize for her book Fault Lines, a fabulous work considering family history via a jumping path of ancestry going back four generations, presented in reverse chronology. Despite the unusual presentation and my typical dislike of gimmicks of this nature, Fault Lines was a triumph that intrigued, compelled, and repulsed me at various times. A history of a family, it’s also a story of politics, identity, and history itself. And despite what I found an unpromising beginning, it completely sucked me in. ... read more

Written by Georgia Claire on 17-02-2012, 1 user comment

A literature that refuses to go missing

Southerly 71:2
A Handful of Sand: Words to the Frontline
Ali Cobby Eckermann & Lionel Fogarty (eds)

Aboriginal people are far more written about than heard, more often the subject of journalistic, medical, sociological, anthropological, and fictional narratives than the author. White society has a way of asking what role Indigenous people might play in ‘our’ narrative, even when that narrative purports to be inclusive and generous. When we look for an Indigenous narrative, all too often it is written by and for whites. ... read more

Written by Jennifer Mills on 15-02-2012, 3 user comments

Dispatch from our intern

From prisoners’ rights in Australia and America to African refugees in Tel Aviv, here’s my pick of some of the most interesting reads from around the web.

Adam Gopnik writes an eloquent essay in the New Yorker about the injustice of mass incarceration in the US.

While over at Right Now, Rose Carnes writes about overcrowding in Western Australia’s prisons.

Michael Hastings interviews Julian Assange for Rolling Stone.

... read more

Written by Roselina Press on 9-02-2012, 3 user comments

‘Last Man in Tower’

Last Man in Tower
Aravind Adiga
Allen & Unwin

The good people of an old apartment block in Mumbai have been offered a fortune to move out.  It is as if they have won Lotto.  But unless they all accept the offer, no-one can benefit.  There is a problem, however – Masterji does not want to move.  This is the starting point for Last Man in Tower which is, stylistically, a very different novel to Adiga’s prize winning The White Tiger, even if violence and corruption are central to both.  Whereas The White Tiger was a confessional novel, told in the first person by a man with a dark history, Last Man in Tower is a traditional third-person narrative where the stories are cleverly interwoven to keep you waiting and to expose the psychology of a group of people in an extraordinary situation.  The characters, even the developer Mr Shah, are well rounded, their motives both simple and complex.  Unfortunately, the women tend to be a bit shrill.   ... read more

Written by Rhona Hammond on 7-02-2012, No comments

Demanding (not begging) the question

Demanding the Impossible: Seven Essays on Resistance
Sylvia Lawson
Melbourne University Press

Sylvia Lawson’s new book of essays is a strong example of journalism of a kind that Australian public culture does not support well, and which can often miss out on the readers who would enjoy it as result – namely an in-depth reflection, from someone outside the star chamber, on matters of public importance to Australia – so it is genuinely important that this book reach its readership.

Demanding the Impossible draws constantly on the historical moment of France’s May ’68 to reflect on moments where the response or non-response of Australian institutions and civil society in the last decade or so has made an important difference to the world around us, whether that difference be material, symbolic, or both. Thus the essays weave in and out of questions around Aboriginal reconciliation, the Northern Territory intervention, and Australia’s response to boat people, as well as East Timor, West Papua, South Africa, the Arab Spring and Chechnya, to name just some of the main examples. ... read more

Written by Tom Clark on 6-02-2012, No comments

Jessica Anderson’s ‘Tirra Lirra by the River’

Are all Australian novels about finding a home? Discuss.
- Anna Krien after judging match one (Kate Grenville’s The Secret River vs Joan London’s Gilgamesh) in the 2011 Meanjin Tournament of Books. Tirra Lirra by the River lost out to My Brilliant Career in match three.

From the back cover: Nora Porteous has spent most of her life waiting to escape. Fleeing from her small-town family and then from her stifling marriage to a mean-spirited husband, Nora arrives finally in London where she creates a new life for herself as a successful dressmaker.

Now in her seventies, Nora returns to Queensland to settle into her childhood home. But Nora has been away a long time, and the people and events are not at all like she remembered them.

... read more

Written by Claire Corbett on 2-02-2012, No comments

A reply to Windschuttle

There are more important issues to deal with right now. The ridiculous overreaction to protesters (rightly) chanting ‘shame’ and ‘racist’ at Tony Abbott (and seemingly also Julia Gillard) has been discussed, among other places, at Newmatilda, and at Crikey.

However, I’ve gotten into an argument with Keith Windschuttle. To which he replied. So I thought I’d try to briefly explain the argument.

My first article made a few basic points. Windschuttle is a very aggressive writer, who does not merely disagree with others: he insists that his ideological opponents have fabricated their claims, and his opponents amount to basically all of the relevant experts. Whitewash, for example, was basically the response of historians – the experts on the history of Indigenous-colonial conflict in Tasmania – to Windschuttle’s book sensational polemic. More recently, declaring that the issue of Stolen Generations was also marked by fabrication, Windschuttle said Robert Manne should ‘stand down from his position’ whilst an independent inquiry took place into his allegedly ‘false claims’. ... read more

Written by Michael Brull on 1-02-2012, 1 user comment

Otherland

Otherland
Maria Tumarkin
Random House

What initially drew me to reviewing historian Maria Tumarkin’s memoir, Otherland, was my interest in its themes. Maria left her birthplace, the Soviet Union, in 1989 as part of the Jewish emigration to Australia before the Berlin wall fell. The premise of Otherland is to tell the story of Maria’s trip back to her motherland with her teengage daughter, Billie. I haven’t read any of Maria’s other books and so I took on the project with a high level of enthusiasm – there are too few migrant stories by Australian authors and I am all for promoting them. But anyone who is familiar with my writing knows that I can be no less than honest and so apologies, in advance, to Maria (and Billie) for what I’m about to say because I feel like I have got to know them, on some level, through the narrative. There have been several discussions here on the blog about the state of the reviewing process but I am hoping that people understand this is just the opinion of one reader, which is entirely subjective. ... read more

Written by Koraly Dimitriadis on 31-01-2012, 3 user comments

Overland Occupy – an online special

The Occupy movement that spread across the globe in 2011 saw a revival of extra-parliamentary politics and sweeping debates about the idea of democracy. It was a movement ignited by the Arab Spring, but one that spread all over the world, including to Australia.

Overland put a callout for an Occupy issue last year. Since then, the movement’s circumstances have changed considerably – Occupy Melbourne no longer resides in City Square, Occupy Sydney has no permanent camp. Can the movement continue now that many of the occupations no longer have a demarcated physical space? ... read more

Written by Jacinda Woodhead on 30-01-2012, No comments

The Tent Embassy protests – a lesson in overreaction and social context

The Australia Day Tent Embassy Protest – was it one of the Nation’s gravest political security threats? A bit of an overreaction? A media beat-up perhaps? Or was there something deeper going on ...

The protests were sparked by comments made by the Opposition Leader Tony Abbott that those at the Tent Embassy ‘move on’ after celebrating its 40th anniversary. Some 200 activists from the Embassy traveled to a nearby ceremony honouring emergency service workers, which was attended by both Abbott and Prime Minister Gillard. After several minutes of chants and window banging, the Prime Minister’s security team decide to bundle both Gillard and Abbott out of the ceremony, where Gillard tripped and lost a shoe in the drama. Both leaders were put into cars, allowing for their departure. ... read more

Written by Neil Robertson on 30-01-2012, 7 user comments

Occupied

Today is the 40th anniversary of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy. I spent the morning reading about it and watching archival footage like that included below. It is Australia’s longest running continuous protest, one that has occupied Parliament lawn for four decades despite police intimidation, perpetual harassment and being legislated against. It began when four young Aboriginal men from Australia's Black Power movement pitched an umbrella in response to William McMahon's announcement that there would be ‘no Aboriginal title’ to Australian land. ... read more

Written by Jacinda Woodhead on 26-01-2012, 14 user comments

On the 71-year-old literary journal Meanjin

Meanjin, Vol 70 No 4 (December 2011)
Sally Heath (ed)

The seventy-one-year-old literary journal Meanjin is looking elegant and rejuvenated since Sally Heath took over as editor in 2011. This is the third edition she has edited and the second to enjoy the new design makeover. White paper stock and clear typeface, use of blank space at the head of each pages (used for notes in red where necessary) and elegant cover design are all welcome improvements.

As for the content, the editorial choices are not significantly changed. An imprint of Melbourne University Press, Meanjin still feels scholarly. The preferred genre is the essay, dealing not just with literature but with broader social, political and cultural issues. The first 130 pages of the 200-page journal are devoted to essays, punctuated by the occasional poem. This is followed by a selection of memoir; a fascinating text/

Written by Carol Middleton on 25-01-2012, No comments

Iconic writing program flounders

This is how it happens. Inch by inch standards are lowered. You pay more for inferior quality. You shop around but realize they're all selling the same stuff. And you wonder, how did it come to this?

The highly regarded RMIT TAFE Diploma of Professional Writing & Editing (RMIT PWE) program is no more. The program will be offered as an associate degree this year charging $5648 a year in fees.

An associate degree is exactly the same as an advanced diploma but is considered a higher degree qualification so you pay more.

I ran RMIT PWE from 1997–2000 and was its program director until 2004. When I left, it cost $500 to study full time at RMIT PWE. The new fees are an increase of 1000 percent. Over the previous 20 years its fees had risen by $100.00. ... read more

Written by Malcolm King on 24-01-2012, 26 user comments

On Southerly and Australian-transnational writing

Southerly, Vol 71 – Modern Mobilities: Australian-Transnational Writing
David Brooks (ed)

What is the Australian identity? This question is posed every three years during a Federal election, with each party claiming to be more ‘Australian’ than the other. The simple truth of the matter is that the Australian identity is a combination of all identities, all nations combining into one giant multicultural casserole pot; at the time of the 2006 Census, 43 percent of all Australians were born overseas or had at least one parent who was born overseas. ... read more

Written by Mark William Jackson on 23-01-2012, 4 user comments