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Issue Details: First known date: 2020... 2020 A Revisiting of a Canonical Writer
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'The Fiction of Tim Winton provides a critical study of the work of one of Australia's most celebrated authors. The book is structured in chapters, eight in total, that seek to interrogate the current significance of Winton's work and its likely influence for the future. In the introduction, McCredden suggests that as an author Tim Winton remains difficult to define. His stories about family life, subjectivity, the individual bond to landscape, and the egalitarian society are critically revisited to examine the career of an author who places himself on the margins of the literary canon. Two chapters (chapters 6 and 8) in particular analyze the impact of the editing and the marketing of stories with specific figures to situate Winton as a global and national author. These two chapters, which may at first appear to merely provide marketing details, are essential and nicely conducted, since McCredden manages to keep her focus on the act of writing. She does not, in fact, simply insert charts and figures; she connects them to the essence of Winton's writing, and this is a tour de force. The theoretical reference to Roland Barthes's use of semiology is all the more significant in that there is a questioning of Winton's use of language and his authorial intent. While his public involvement on social, political, and cultural issues is mentioned, the book does not expand on the slight rapport that some readers may see between literature and politics.'  (Introduction)

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    y separately published work icon Antipodes vol. 34 no. 1 June 2020 22817380 2020 periodical issue

    'Before I wrote my first book, I didn't fully understand how the "editor" really worked. In shepherding that first book to publication, I had the good fortune and excellent guidance of Helen Tartar, longtime humanities editor at Stanford University Press, underappreciated there and in a fit of downsizing, forced to relocate to Fordham University Press, where she was given the means and the opportunity to flourish, especially in her forte, working with young scholars. My book had its particular fits and starts and a bit of a challenge getting past the review board. I'll never forget sitting with Helen at a book exhibit, probably at the American Comparative Literature Association annual convention, a moment of quiet while everyone was in sessions, and figuring out the last revisions to my manuscript. It wasn't a long conversation, or a demanding one, but somehow, she was working her magic. I left that convention knowing exactly what I needed to do, and I marveled at her ability to help me figure that out. At that point, I started to know what an editor could do, to understand when writers talked about "my editor" and all that this relationship implied.' (Brenda Machosky, From the Editor, introduction)

    2020
    pg. 142-144
Last amended 2 Sep 2021 07:54:38
142-144 A Revisiting of a Canonical Writersmall AustLit logo Antipodes
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