Cirrus@Austlit

'Each morning on my way to work, I took a photograph of the same dog. As I trundled down Little Lonsdale Street, there he always was behind a shopfront-style window, lying on a sheepskin rug, his stout shaggy body twitching amid pupmares. One day, in child’s handwriting, words appeared on the glass: ‘This is Sid. He is 17 years old. Please do not tap the glass.’ As weeks passed, more and more paint began to spread across the window, day by day, until it covered the entire surface of the glass, sparing only, to my relief, a small peephole through which I continued to view Sid. Passers-by, noticing me crouching by his rugside, would sometimes approach and tap on the window. I’d swallow my fury at this flagrant violation of the rules. Sid never awoke, though. I witnessed him conscious only once, his bulging eyes clouded over with prophecy or, I later realised, cataracts. The very next day, Sid was gone. He did not appear in the window again.' 

 (Publication abstract)

 

'Early last year, when Robert Silvers died, one of his many former assistants recalled her time working for him at the New York Review of Books, the legendary magazine that he co-founded and edited for over half a century: His admiration for writers was unsurpassable. He was adamant that he was not one himself. ‘It’s a dog’s work,’ he said whenever anyone tried to glamorize his own fifty-year-long endeavor to facilitate the flourishing of American intellectual life. He loved being the dog'  (Introduction)

When I was a child, I could see ghosts. I could hear them too. 'What's your name? What did you die of?' I asked a ghost one day. A nun, in her habit. 'A broken heart, child.' This nun I would talk to in the cemeteria. She would walk home with us sometimes, in the hot sun, while we stopped frequently to talk to people in the village. I was responsible for carrying the white lilies on the way, and carrying the beheaded, dead flowers on the way home for the rubbish...' 

 (Publication abstract)

'Three figures run onto the rail bridge. They're shadowed, deeply silhouetted in the faint glow of dawn, their faces covered. Within seconds, they're in the middle of the bridge, rapidly hoisting a rope from the riverbed below up onto the tracks. They pull it tight, bodies leaning back against the rope, then disappear as they bend down to tie the knots. Fifteen seconds later, it's done. The rope stretches from the bridge to a tall tree. Dangling from the other end of the rope, hoisted over a branch several metres in the air, is a small tent-like structure with a man inside. The figures on the bridge gesture to the man, then pack up their gear and split for the highway.'  (Publication abstract)

'Who would you rather fuck, F. Scott Fitzgerald or Ernest Hemingway?...'  (Publication abstract)

'The bathroom had pink tiles. That was one thing. Another thing, I told them, was a squat, oblong window above the sink. Too squat to let a body through, but enough to let the Buenos Aires songs come in, and keep coming in. It was a Tuesday night. I remember because as I was pissing, a guy was walking by outside on the other side of the wall, and he was singing, 'Saturday, Saturday, Saturday, oh Saturday night is over.' I heard him like he was right next to me. The window was just above my head and had no flyscreen or glass or anything. I remember because I was drunk and I thought, That at least is true, because it is Tuesday and so Saturday night is over. It is true like so very few things are.'  (Publication abstract)

'Through the curved opening I could see the shell's spiralling innards; pink and wet-looking. I could hear the ocean. Not just by holding the shell to my ear, but every night as I opened my bedroom window to release the summer heat. The pink shell was perfect. It had been pocketed at Cape Schanck, at low tide, at the bottom of the long boardwalk.' (Publication summary)

'The truffiere looks bigger than in the photos online. The photos on the web page make it look quaint, like a hobby farm. In real life there are large sheds, and the strong oak and hazelnut trees are scattered across acres. I feel duped but I don't know why...'  (Publication abstract)

'Mutually. assured. destruction. do you know what that is or not...' (Publication abstract)

'Even at the best of times Nunawading McDonald's can seem like purgatory, and this is not the best of times, and Daedalus can't help but think he is in literal purgatory. It might be common knowledge that the windows in Dan Murphy's Honda don't go down but that doesn't mean it's any less stifling to sit in...' 

 (Publication abstract)

'When the man brought Piper out from the kennels, he used two leads to restrain her: one clipped to a reinforced collar, the other looped around her chest and under her front legs. She was jetblack with a white bib and one grey sock. Her skin was patchy with mange scars and sagged off her bones.' (Publication abstract)