'Pain was Joe Grim's self-expression, his livelihood and reason for being. In 1908-09 the Italian-American boxer toured Australia, losing fights but amazing crowds with his showmanship and extraordinary physical resilience. On the east coast Grim played a supporting role in the Jack Johnson-Tommy Burns Fight of the Century; on the west coast he was committed to an insane asylum. In between he played with the concept and reality of pain in a shocking manner not witnessed before or since. Award-winning writer Michael Winkler braids the story of Grim in Australia and meditations on pain with thoughts on masculinity and vulnerability, plus questionable jokes, in a haymaker of experimental non-fiction.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
Epigraph:
Nurse, where are we going?
— To the morgue.
But I haven't died yet.
— Well, we haven't arrived yet.
'Australian fiction has long been dominated by the realist novel. A new wave of writers continue the avant-garde tradition—but are experimental and offbeat stories always destined to be relegated to a literary niche? '
'In 'Ars Poetica', written around 19 BCE, Horace postulated 'ut pictura poesis'. This formulation, abbreviated by scholars as u.p.p., has been chewed over in the intervening two millennia. Horace's dictum translates to 'as is painting so is poetry'. U.p.p. was a restatement of the claim by Simonides of Ceos that 'poema pictura loquens, pictura poema silens' (poetry is a speaking picture, painting a silent poetry), but with the order of artforms reversed.' (Publication abstract)
'This year’s Miles Franklin shortlist is lyrical in voice, complex in form, and perhaps a little more hopeful than usual. The threads of shared concern across the volumes leave me wondering whether there is something in the zeitgeist.' (Introduction)
'This year’s Miles Franklin shortlist is lyrical in voice, complex in form, and perhaps a little more hopeful than usual. The threads of shared concern across the volumes leave me wondering whether there is something in the zeitgeist.' (Introduction)
'In 'Ars Poetica', written around 19 BCE, Horace postulated 'ut pictura poesis'. This formulation, abbreviated by scholars as u.p.p., has been chewed over in the intervening two millennia. Horace's dictum translates to 'as is painting so is poetry'. U.p.p. was a restatement of the claim by Simonides of Ceos that 'poema pictura loquens, pictura poema silens' (poetry is a speaking picture, painting a silent poetry), but with the order of artforms reversed.' (Publication abstract)
'Australian fiction has long been dominated by the realist novel. A new wave of writers continue the avant-garde tradition—but are experimental and offbeat stories always destined to be relegated to a literary niche? '
