'The only time I heard Shirley Hazzard use the word ‘hate’ during the thirteen years I knew her was one night in Rome when I walked her back to the Hassler Hotel after a dinner at Otello on Via della Croce. (For half a century, both with and without her husband Francis Steegmuller, she stayed in the same room at the Hassler Hotel whenever she was in Rome, and only occasionally did she and I ever dine at a restaurant other than Otello when we got together in Rome). I mentioned something about a place that had changed. She stopped in her tracks, put her hand on my arm, and declared: ‘I hate change.’' (Introduction)
'While researching editing history in Australia, I found some of Craig Munro’s early advocacy on behalf of editors on the endpapers of a now obscure collection of conference proceedings. Printed on a textured, peach-coloured stock is a facsimile of Munro’s handwritten notes for his talk entitled ‘Final Working Draft’ from the 1990 ‘Editing in Australia’ conference. The conference was concerned with textual editing and the commonly held supposition of textual editing, that the author’s intention is key and that editors interfere, constrict, or even ruin a work, clearly irked Craig Munro, editor of some of Australia’s most celebrated authors such as Peter Carey and Frank Moorhouse. He was keen to point out that textual editing can ignore the processes through which a book passes on its way to the reader . Munro knew these processes intimately from his time at UQP, the house where he started as a junior and went on to become publishing manager. Munro was disappointed that the star speakers at the conference spoke as if the publishing editor and publishing process were not inextricably linked to the author and the author’s work. His comments continue on the endpaper at the back of the book:' (Introduction)
'On the second day of 2020, my partner and I caught a train through the suburbs of Munich to Dachau, then a bus to the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site. It was bitterly cold, the morning air nipping our cheeks. Frost crunched beneath our feet and weak sunlight drifted through clouds. At the site, we passed beneath the grim words ‘Arbeit macht frei’, soldered onto the entrance gates (as they also were in Auschwitz and other concentration camps). We moved slowly through the rectangular buildings, reading squares of information about the inhumane treatment of the prisoners. By the time we emerged from the last building, we were weighed down with horror.' (Introduction)
