For Christmas I read Geordie Williamson’s The burning library and a sea-side sinkhole opened up in my reading list. A sinkhole of neglect for many of Australia’s now-unknown literary gems. Yes, I had read Patrick White’s marvellous novels Voss, Tree of Man and The vivisector; Randolph Stow’s great Tourmaline; as well as works by Thomas Keneally,…
Albert Camus, The outsider (1942 / 1982 English translation) This short novel had a profound affect on me when I first read it as a teenager (more than 30 years ago). And still does after multiple re-readings. It begins with perfect indifference. Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know. To Meursault, it doesn’t matter when. She…
Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin (1957) Nabokov began creating the eponymous character of this novella (or collection of loosely-linked stories), the Russian exile Timofey Pavlovich Pnin, assistant professor at the fictional Waindell College, as an antidote to the claustrophobic Humbert Humbert of Lolita. Despite Pnin’s bumbling, miscommunication and heartbreak, he is an endearing character, one for whom…
Meg Mooney, Being Martha’s friend (Picaro Press, 2015) Land and people. Place and space. Searching and belonging. These themes resonate strongly throughout this collection (her third) of poetry that could come from nowhere else but out of the red sand of Central Australia. The poetics are subtle, the narrative spare but honest. Each poem cooks like…
Sebastiao Salgado, Genesis Not a novel or non-fiction. This is one man’s love letter to the planet in about one thousand stunningly surreal and unique black-and-white images. If you haven’t seen Salgado’s work, then have a look at this weighty hardback. And go and see the insightful documentary about his life in photography – The Salt of…
The call of a bugle in the early morning. … The day of the dead began. … We stopped by the war memorial. Slowly the others gathered, from the shanties and from the camp, called by that ancient and haunting bugle-cry, whose sound to me is like the memory of a grief so old that…
Nobel Lectures: from the Literature Laureates, 1986 to 2006 For anyone even remotely interested in writing or reading, this book is a gem. The acceptance lectures from 21 of the most esteemed writers of the 20th century are as diverse as the backgrounds and influences of the writers themselves. Orhan Pamuk, Harold Pinter, Günter Grass,…
TGH Strehlow, Journey to Horseshoe Bend (Rigby 1978 reprint) For anyone even remotely interested in the intercultural history and landscape of Central Australia, this small volume is revered as being one of the gospel texts. A ‘true’ story of the struggle between life and death, and of faith, whilst travelling through a landscape whose mythological essence continues…
Saskia Beudel, A country in mind: memoir with landscape (UWAP 2013) Although the cover image (of a bushwalker, large pack on back, standing amongst footprints on sand with, apart from her shadow, no other distinguishing features) and the blurb (about trekking in Central Australia, Tasmania, Ladakh, and the outward journey and the inward journey that…
Richard Flanagan, The narrow road to the deep north (Vintage 2013) I have admired Richard Flanagan’s stories, prose, vision (and environmental ethic) for many years. My wife was reading his first novel, Death of a river guide, as we rafted down a low Franklin River on our honeymoon in January 1998. His earlier masterpiece, Gould’s book…
Michael Giacometti 