Cirrus@Austlit

'If somehow you haven’t read His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman yet, I strongly recommend you get on that immediately. It is fantastic. And not just because of the initially alcoholic, armoured and in all other ways badarse polar bear. While such a character would probably be enough for me personally, wait, there’s more! In the first stage of this epic adventure, we’re introduced to Lyra. She is a sass-mouth scallywag who lives in Jordan College, Oxford, and kills time by causing trouble with her dæmon Pantalaimon. There is a metric fuckton of things to unpack in these novels—physics, philosophy and theology, mostly—but it’s Pan and his ilk I wanna discuss here.'  (Publication abstract)

'What I’ve always loved most about reading is the experience. Interpretations or ‘meanings’ are fascinating, but I find the best texts are those that affect me in a variety of ways. I know many (perhaps most) readers feel the same, and many, like me, probably undertook an arts degree majoring in English on the back of their love for the reading experience. Yet I think I’m also safe in saying that a lot of English students likewise found a number of the cultural and textual theories they learned about to be somewhat dissatisfying analytical lenses—lenses that, however interesting, sometimes seemed dryly reductive and didn’t really do justice to texts as aesthetic objects. In the third year of my arts degree, I finally discovered a philosophy that shed some light on what might be happening in me whenever I read, and which revolutionised how I view writing, life and the world. This philosophy was that of French poststructuralist thinkers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari.'

 (Introduction)

'I remember the day they came for me. A cold day, with frost crisp on the ground. Then it started: a door slamming, a sudden shout, and the smash of steel on steel.'

 (Publication abstract)

'This house is my mother's house. I moved back here when my daughter was born. A baby with a baby she called me. I knew I was here on her charity. But my daughter's father was gone well before the birth and I wasn't counting on any child support...' (Publication abstract)

 

'It's summer's first gasps. All the doors in the house are open and the air is thick with morning. I'm cultivating a scene for him to stumble into, lying on my stomach in short shorts, some underground hip-hop oozing from the laptop, reading the news. But I'm waiting too long and the vignette is getting stale. I get up and pour myself some water, wander barefoot in the dusty backyard and think about the mess of the evening before. Of riding home early in the morning, spent and sore and relieved to be alone. I've made some poor decisions lately. I want to start making better ones. But my skin is newly clean and the day is glittering, and when I hear a soft, cheery voice wafting through from the open door I get nervous and I can feel it in my legs'. (Publication abstract)

 

'There was once a clever goblin who owned a village bakehouse. His name was Avartum - Avartum Avagartum. He was not just a clever goblin but a kind-hearted goblin as well, and it is important that you know this. For you see, there are a few kind-hearted goblins like Avartum in this world, but there are many more goblins who are not so kind. You know the mean goblins of whom I speak: the big ones who hide in caves by roadsides and wait for unsuspecting travellers to scare, rob, or even (on the big goblins' more ravenous days) devour; or the smaller goblins, the slyer ones, the ones with pointier ears and wickeder smiles who sit atop toadstools and place nasty spells on unsuspecting passers-by. Avartum, who was a bigger goblin, was not cruel like these others. Indeed, he had the utmost respect for the unsuspecting, whom he suspected did not much enjoy being scared, robbed, devoured or having un-desirable spells cast upon them, just as he would not enjoy these things.' (Publication abstract)

 

'The government and big corporations are watching my every move. I imagine a little man wearing glasses. He is extremely intelligent, geeky and forever taking notes. He knows that when I get up I immediately check my Twitter feed. He knows who I follow and who is following me. He knows how many friends I have on Facebook, how many of them are female and how many of those female friends are single. If that isn't creepy enough he can also see who I'm dating, how long we've been together and what I'm talking about with them online and on my phone.' (Publication abstract)

 

'After New Year's we'd all head up to Shoal Bay: me, my mum, my dad and Richie, clamped together in this dingy blue Pulsar, screaming down the highway at ninety an hour. And the bush would be flying past us and the trucks and the road signs, and the car would be spluttering out diesel. Me and Richie would be in the back, our pockets stuffed with Gameboy batteries, shooting at pixels on tiny grey screens. And Mum would be in the front, one hand draped across her eyes, lip twitching from time to time as smoke from my dad's cigarette drifted past, and Dad ... well ... Dad would be sitting back in his chair, one arm resting on an open window, the cigarette dangling loosely between his lips....'  (Publication abstract)

 

'They named her Bronte, unable to decide between Charlotte and Anne. 'A windswept name,' thought Rebecca, with the exhilaration of some-one about to do something not quite sensible. Bronte slithered out from between Rebecca's thighs, cold and wet, with a thatch of dark hair plastered to her face. She lay gasping like a dying fish until the doctor wiped the mucus from her mouth and smacked her smartly on the back...' (Publication abstract)

 

'Cool church arrived on the campus of my Catholic school halfway through year twelve, at the height of our school's war on sex. Greater Union Morley had already experienced the first wave of our awkward sexuality in year ten as a fingering epidemic swept the cinemas. Gangly teenage boys steered their dates to the darkest corners of the cinema, inching their hand ever closer to girls' groins as Sandra Bullock looked down. The school did its best to discourage such activity, banning hugging, kissing and hand-holding in an effort to stamp out the blossoming teenage romances.'  (Publication abstract)