Fifty Years of Innocent Happiness single work   autobiography  
Issue Details: First known date: 2018... 2018 Fifty Years of Innocent Happiness
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Have we done with the man in the open-necked shirt solemnly enjoying his ice cream? It would appear not. For a long time he was there in the flesh, as real as you or me. You could, if you wanted to, examine the hairs on his shins or press your hand to the pocket containing a biro and a small packet of Benson and Hedges. You could breathe in the cigarette and beer smell of him. But then he began to melt along with his ice cream in the sun. The sweetness melts and mingles with skin. You look again and he has become digital, a low-resolution copy of a copy, a little jagged around the edges. He is perhaps blending with parts of the caravan park in the background. Still, we have not done with him. We wait for him to lick again. To catch one more glimpse of that living tongue.'  (Introduction)

Notes

  • Epigraph: The image of Australia is of a man in an open-necked shirt solemnly enjoying an ice cream. His kiddy is beside him.

    —Donald Horne

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Meanjin Slave to the Algorithm vol. 77 no. 4 Summer 2018 15360812 2018 periodical issue

    'Meanjin did not publish a piece of fiction until 1943 - 'we still strive to talk poetry', founding editor Clem Christesen observed, perhaps tellingly, in the first Meanjin of December 1940.' (Jonathan Green Editorial introduction)

    2018
    pg. 178-182
Last amended 14 Sep 2021 16:44:42
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Subjects:
  • Carnarvon, Gascoyne - Murchison area, North Western Australia, Western Australia,
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