Published 6 August 201010 August 2010 · Main Posts Failed novels Georgia Claire So last month the girlfriend and I went to see Christopher Hitchens talk about his new book of memoirs. I’m not really into memoir so probably missed out on some of what he said, however, did get one real gem out of the evening. Among other things, he and school friends – and later, other friends, including Salman Rushdie – used to play a game of inventing titles of books that didn’t quite make it. The favored example given was Mr Gatsby. This has of course inspired us to come up with as many failed book titles as we can. I’ve started with the following: Alice in an Interesting Place The Conjuror of Oz The Moderately Well Known Five Diary of a Prostitute Anne of the Green Roof (and the sequel, Anne from a Small Town) The Manipulative Mr Ripley The Unconcluded Novel Older Girls American Lunatic A Long While Alone The challenge is to guess all of the above titles – and come up with more failed novels. Georgia Claire More by Georgia Claire Overland is a not-for-profit magazine with a proud history of supporting writers, and publishing ideas and voices often excluded from other places. If you like this piece, or support Overland’s work in general, please subscribe or donate. Related articles & Essays First published in Overland Issue 228 25 May 202326 May 2023 · Main Posts The ‘Chinese question’ and colonial capitalism in New Gold Mountain Christy Tan SBS’s New Gold Mountain sets out to recover the history of the Gold Rush from the marginalised perspective of Chinese settlers but instead reinforces the erasure of Indigenous sovereignty. Although celebrated for its multilingual script and diverse representation, the mini-TV series ignores how the settlement of Chinese migrants and their recruitment into colonial capitalism consolidates the ongoing displacement of First Nations peoples. First published in Overland Issue 228 15 February 202322 February 2023 · Main Posts Self-translation and bilingual writing as a transnational writer in the age of machine translation Ouyang Yu To cut a long story short, it all boils down to the need to go as far away from oneself as possible before one realizes another need to come back to reclaim what has been lost in the process while tying the knot of the opposite ends and merging them into a new transformation.
