Tightrope single work   review   essay  
Issue Details: First known date: 2016... 2016 Tightrope
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'You can tell a lot about a piece of writing from how it begins. For American poet Billy Collins, ‘the first line is the DNA of the poem’. With novels, as J.M. Coetzee writes, in Elizabeth Costello, ‘the problem of the opening ... is a simple bridging problem ... People solve such problems every day ... and having solved them push on.’ Coetzee’s high-wire opening barely hints at the philosophico-literary grapplings that will ensue, but in an after-the-fact reading it is all there – the structural reliance on Kafka’s ‘Before the Law’ (1915), the inference that a passage through the recurring impasses of language is somehow guaranteed by death, the acknowledgment that building/writing is also always a matter of destruction.' (Introduction)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Last amended 1 Feb 2017 13:51:08
31 https://www.australianbookreview.com.au/abr-online/archive/2016/december-2016-no-387/188-december-2016-no-387/3723-fiona-hile-reviews-letter-to-pessoa-other-short-fictions-by-michelle-cahill Tightropesmall AustLit logo Australian Book Review
Subjects:
Newspapers:
    Powered by Trove
    X