'Tearing up the rules on political memoirs
'Most political memoirs are boring.
'Bob Carr tears up the rules. He plunges in, beginning with the despair of a young man pining for a political career, convinced he's going nowhere, then vaulting to the exhilaration of a premier who, on one day, saves a vast forest and unveils the country's best curriculum.
'He lashes himself for ignoring a cry from a prisoner in a cell and for a breach of protocol with a US Supreme Court judge. He considers talking to the leader of a notorious rape gang and celebrates winning power against the odds: a leader without kids or any interest in sport.
'He describes growing up in a fibro house without sewerage and a 'lousy education' that produced a lifetime appetite for self-learning. He is candid about dealing with the media, dining with royals, working for Kerry Packer.
'He reveals the secrets he learnt from Neville Wran. He is open about his adulation of Gough Whitlam. Floating above all is Bob Carr's idea of public service in a party, he says, that resembles an old, scarred, barnacled whale.
'In an era of bland politicians, here's one with personality true to his quirky self.
'Silence the jet skis! Balance the budget! Liberate the dolphins! Roll out the toll roads! Declare a million hectares of eucalypt wilderness! Be a politician of character.
'All author proceeds from this book are donated to help the children displaced by the Syrian civil war by funding humanitarian aid through the registered charity Australia for UNHCR.'(Publication summary)
'Run For Your Life is not an orthodox autobiography. It is, rather, a stir‐fry of memoir, apologia pro vita sua, personal observations and political insights. If the result is at times indigestible, there are some tasty morsels. Carr’s description of his childhood, for example, effectively evokes a vanished post‐war suburban Australia. There is an excellent account of his difficult years in Opposition. With the frankness and honesty that is a feature of the book, Carr gives an amusing description of a Chinese restaurant lunch in 1990 where ALP elders brutally attacked his performance: “The criticism flowed like the wine, the Leader’s standing was demolished with the shredded lamb and fried rice” (p.66).' (Introduction)
'The latest publication by former New South Wales Premier Bob Carr, a prolific author since leaving federal politics in 2013, is a political memoir that defies the norms of this often-predictable genre. Largely abandoning chronological narrative, Carr offers a disjointed sequence of nearly fifty short chapters that sing, in his own description, like jazz-inspired improvisations. These fragments – confessions, hypotheticals, diary excerpts, correspondence, flashbacks, and a curious ‘flash forward’ to 2050 when he will be aged 102, make for a stylistically unusual and readable combination.' (Introduction)
'The latest publication by former New South Wales Premier Bob Carr, a prolific author since leaving federal politics in 2013, is a political memoir that defies the norms of this often-predictable genre. Largely abandoning chronological narrative, Carr offers a disjointed sequence of nearly fifty short chapters that sing, in his own description, like jazz-inspired improvisations. These fragments – confessions, hypotheticals, diary excerpts, correspondence, flashbacks, and a curious ‘flash forward’ to 2050 when he will be aged 102, make for a stylistically unusual and readable combination.' (Introduction)
'Run For Your Life is not an orthodox autobiography. It is, rather, a stir‐fry of memoir, apologia pro vita sua, personal observations and political insights. If the result is at times indigestible, there are some tasty morsels. Carr’s description of his childhood, for example, effectively evokes a vanished post‐war suburban Australia. There is an excellent account of his difficult years in Opposition. With the frankness and honesty that is a feature of the book, Carr gives an amusing description of a Chinese restaurant lunch in 1990 where ALP elders brutally attacked his performance: “The criticism flowed like the wine, the Leader’s standing was demolished with the shredded lamb and fried rice” (p.66).' (Introduction)
