If the overreacting author is unknown (and a bit insane), all the resulting publicity will be bad, as it will probably be if an author tracks down and stalks someone who gives them a going-over on Goodreads. In the latter case, though, the author may be seen as bravely standing up to ‘the Goodreads bullies’. The democracy of the internet. Authors hate that, in inverse proportion to their success and/or talent.

It is, by turns, a love letter to seventies science fiction; a study of the clash between Hollywood filmmaking culture and the mores of the European avant garde; and a celebration of unrestrained creativity and artistic determination. I don’t mean to sound trite, but it is a film every creative, whatever they do, should see.

I am not ordinarily interested in behind-the-scenes accounts and authorial meta-analyses, and studiously avoid for instance the director’s commentary tracks on DVDs, but lately the convergence of Gilligan’s show-after-the-show, and of the torrent of viewer commentary and critique on the web became an irresistible spectacle, every bit as absorbing as the show proper.

Fiction writer, poet, essayist and literary critic, Kirsten Tranter, grew up in Sydney’s literary atmosphere and studied at the University of Sydney, but it was at New York’s Rutgers University that she completed her PhD in English on Renaissance poetry. Tranter’s first novel, The Legacy, was listed for the Miles Franklin in 2010. Her second […]

Elizabeth Kadetsky continues our series of regular cross-posts from international writers or journals with similar political or aesthetic sensibilities to Overland. Elizabeth Kadetsky’s short stories have been chosen for a Puschart Prize, Best New American Voices and Best American Short Stories notable stories of 2009, and her personal essays have appeared in the New York […]

Out of the Box: Contemporary Australian Gay and Lesbian Poets Michael Farrell and Jill Jones (eds) Puncher & Wattman Poetry I’ve put off reviewing this book. During the whole of 2010 I must have reviewed one too many collection of academic lyricism which clashed violently with my academic burnout. The result was that every contemporary […]

So you want to be a poet. When you desperately want something, it’s difficult to get past the wanting, and look into the mechanics of achieving that thing. It’s not enough to want to be a poet, just like it’s not enough to want to be a dancer. Dancing requires grace, agility, athleticism, rhythm and […]

‘Your mileage may vary’, Georgia Claire’s recent piece on the worthlessness of rock criticism, gave the impression of an archaeologist stumbling across a snippet of text from some curious – if clearly uncivilised – tribe. (Which, in fairness, isn’t an inaccurate description of most rock critics.) How funny these people are, with their made-up words […]

I made my first foray to the Oxford Art Factory this week to see a gig by Jenny Lewis’ new band, Jenny and Johnny, who were quite decent. They were supported by a band I’d never heard of called the Laurels, so, in preparation, my companions and I looked them up online to learn a […]

A warning first up: if this blog dissolves into nonsensical rambling, please be so kind as to quietly move on to something more substantial. (Pretty much anything on the Overland site without my name attached to it.) Because, quite frankly, this could get quite silly. Last Wednesday night, the lovely Shearer’s bookshop in Leichhardt hosted […]

Regular readers will be aware of the back-and-forth between the writer, blogger and academic Emmett Stinson, and various Overland peeps. I’ve been away for the last fortnight, and so missed the most recent installments in the saga. Then, this morning when I started writing in Jane’s thread, my brief comments blew out so much that […]

There has been a resurgence of interest out there on the blogs about Buddhism, its Western interpretations, and the various statements of the provocative Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek on the subject. To represent Zizek’s opinions is to take aim at a moving target, as he develops them over time, dialectically, and often contradicts himself even […]

As he battled terminal illness in late 2009, acclaimed historian Tony Judt delivered a lecture at NYU that would become the basis for his final book. But rather than be obsessed with endings, he used the occasion to put out an impassioned call for new beginnings, based on the spirit of a past era that […]

In Overland 200, Marion Rankine examines originality or lack thereof when writers write Australia, ‘Sometimes it takes a writer’: Flicking through an old issue of Overland (edition 182) I came across an essay by Malcolm Knox entitled ‘Pushing Against the Real World: The Case for “Original” Australian Fiction’. It sparked my interest – I was […]

Writer, poet and bloggerAlison Croggon recently spoke in the Wheeler Centre as part of the Critical Failure series. Her article from Overland 200 on Australianism in contemporary theatre is now online.