Issue Details: First known date: 2022... 2022 Howard’s End : A Booker Winner Recalls Life in Sydney
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'A Writer’s Beginnings begins: ‘My mother died today.’ One could be excused for thinking that one was reading not a memoir but a Campus Novel without the ‘p’, an experience that Howard Jacobson will suffer later in this book. Who could read this incipit without hearing the famous beginning: ‘Aujourd’hui maman est morte. Ou peut-être hier, je ne sais pas.’ Jacobson, on the other hand, knows. He continues: ‘It is 3 May 2020. She is ninety-seven years old.’ I cannot recall whether Albert Camus specifies his protagonist’s mother’s age in L’Étranger (1942). A Camus novel is surely a Campus Novel without the ‘p’, the latter a sub-genre that Jacobson will both live out teaching English at a polytechnic in a defunct football stadium and come to write. Indeed, so insistent is his use of the locution ‘we’ll come to that later’ that one could be excused for thinking prolepsis a Finklerish (see below) rhetorical device. Give Howard Jacobson enough trope and he’ll surely hang himself.' (Publication summary)

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  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Australian Book Review no. 444 July 2022 24758577 2022 periodical issue

    'St Peter’s first words to the resurrected Christ, ‘Quo vadis?’ or ‘Whither goest thou?’, capture the spirit of these reorienting times. In our July feature, senior contributors and commentators nominate key policy reforms for the Albanese government. Abroad, Ben Saul dissects the Western response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, while John Zubrzycki assesses the prospects of an Indian democratic recovery. In the new mood of rapprochement, Julia Horne and Penny Russell reconsider the relationship between academics and government. New books on the historical divisions of gender and class are examined by Shannon Burns and Yassmin Abdel-Magied. Translation comes in for scrutiny with Frances Wilson’s review of Lydia Davis’s second collection of essays and Humphrey Bower’s review of Alison Croggon’s Rilke. There are reviews of new fiction by Geraldine Brooks, Michelle Cahill, and Yuri Felsen – and much, much more!' (Publication summary)

     

    2022
    pg. 47
Last amended 4 Jul 2022 11:51:41
47 https://www.australianbookreview.com.au/abr-online/archive/2022/july-2022-no-444/979-july-2022-no-444/9321-don-anderson-reviews-mother-s-boy-a-writer-s-beginnings-by-howard-jacobson Howard’s End : A Booker Winner Recalls Life in Sydneysmall AustLit logo Australian Book Review
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