FOB: Fresh Off the Books single work   essay  
Issue Details: First known date: 2017... 2017 FOB: Fresh Off the Books
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‘Only idiots and government leeches live in Western Sydney,’ Zekay said to me as he tied up his oily brown hair into a topknot. He was standing in the middle of the grass at Central Park Mall, his hairy arms spread out like he was Jesus on the cross. Zekay was a University of Technology Sydney film student who lived in Surry Hills and loved to call himself the Son of Man while scratching the wiry pubes under his arms. I had met Zekay on Tinder, drawn by his curly hair and long lashes. His skin was as white as bleached notebook paper.' (Introduction)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Cordite Poetry Review Mathematics vol. 83 November 2017 12169361 2017 periodical issue

    'I was already quite a few years into a creative writing PhD titled ‘Generic Engineering’ and flailing around quite spectacularly in a galaxy of words when an academic friend, perhaps hoping to spare me the indignity of a completed thesis and potential employment, flipped to the middle of the 526-page book he was reading. Wordlessly, pointed to a single sentence. ‘Due to a predilection whose origin I will leave it up to the reader to determine,’ it read, ‘I will choose the symbol ♀ for this inscription.’ The symbol had been summoned to designate what the writer called ‘generic multiple’. The generic, the writer noted, is ‘the adjective retained by mathematicians to designate the indiscernible, the absolutely indeterminate’. Another PhD student who was in the room sniggered, disparagingly, I thought, as if dubious that I could be capable of understanding what had been read aloud. In retrospect it was more likely a beleaguered exhalation, a stockpile for the future, of sympathy and despair.' (Editorial)

    2017
Last amended 1 Nov 2017 15:13:11
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