Overland literary journal

Meanland: The obscure object of e-reading desire

I’m delighted that less sycophantic views of the career of the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs are being voiced – here on Overland, and also in the Guardian – and it’s comforting to know that I’m not the only one bewildered by the businessman’s glorification as a ‘visionary’ and a ‘creative genius’. While it may be uncouth to speak ill of the dead, I would like to begin this blog by citing journalist Tanya Gold’s view of Jobs’ consumer gadgets as objects which, far from revolutionising the world, have simply made it easier for people to ‘routinely ignore each other in public’. The now common pathological indulgence in the virtual stimuli provided ad infinitum via iPhones has made us less connected to our physical environments and has, according to Gold, made it possible for us to ‘communicate [our] indifference better’. If so, could it be said that e-book readers such as iPads, despite their appearance of making books and writing more accessible, have in fact made us more indifferent toward books and have turned us into worse readers? ... read more

Written by Ali Alizadeh on 31-10-2011, 16 user comments

Meanland: Travels with my iPad

I can’t imagine leaving home without a book.

I’ve been travelling overseas recently. A good part of travelling and preparing to travel has always been about the book. Of course there are the novels and travel guides read before leaving, but more important are the books to take on the trip.

For me, it’s always a series of books; the travel guide, the book I leave home with, the book bought at the airport or train station, the book bought in the place I go to, and the serendipitous book exchanged with a fellow traveller. On a long trip I’m generally lugging somewhere between two and five books – a sizable slice of my baggage allowance.

You’d think I’d be a perfect candidate for downloading all the books into one slimline eReader or tablet. But I couldn’t do it. The title of this blogpost is a lie. In my recent travel, I remained determinedly old school. ... read more

Written by Catherine Moffat on 6-10-2011, 1 user comment

Meanland: The internet – friend or foe to the small magazine?

The spectre of the internet has been haunting Australian literary journals for well over a decade. But a few recent events seem to have transformed this spectral haunting into a brutal hunt. According to The Mercury newspaper, Tasmanian Premier Lara Giddings has decided to terminate funding for one of the country’s main print literary journals Island due to her belief in a ‘“trend” towards online rather than hard-copy publications’. Earlier this year saw the last print issue of another crucial Australian literary magazine HEAT, as, in the words of the magazine’s Deputy Editor Fiona Wright, the print medium or the ‘book form’ is ‘increasingly unviable’. Last but not least, there has been serious speculation about the iconic literary journal Meanjin ‘being forced’ according to Peter Craven, ‘to go online in a way that will effectively kill it’. ... read more

Written by Ali Alizadeh on 22-09-2011, 5 user comments

Meanland: Memory and corruption

Harvard University Press has released a new annotated version of The Picture of Dorian Gray, edited by Nicholas Frankel. It contains five hundred words that were edited out of the original published version without Wilde’s knowledge. Five hundred words. It’s not much. About half the length of this blog post. Yet as soon as I heard about it, I wanted it.

It’s almost impossible to read The Picture of Dorian Gray now without thinking about the book’s later impact on Wilde’s life and its place in evidence at his trial. It’s also impossible for me to read it the way I first read it when I was thirteen or fourteen. ... read more

Written by Catherine Moffat on 2-09-2011, 9 user comments