Figuring-out Basin single work   essay  
Issue Details: First known date: 2023... 2023 Figuring-out Basin
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'When a novel invites me, as does the title section opening of Scott McCulloch's debut novel Basin — "Figure in Terminal Landscape" — to approach it as I might a piece of visual art or dance or theatre, or even as a piece of music, my whole heart gladdens Yes, and yes! Because this is what happens for me anyway when 1 read a novel, as I have always thought, since it will always be the thingness of the work and how that thingness affects (or not) my being in the world that tells me whether I am likely to keep that novel by me always or not. And so the felt experience of it first, and only later the thoughts. and between one and the other, often a long, slow crawling out into the air — or so I have had to remind my-self. because how else to account for all the difficulty, all the impossibility of working, of writing or even of thinking about this otherwise brilliantly realised novel Basin — all of the long non-writing then (or rather useless writing) that followed my experience of first reading it some time last year? Flow much easier it would have been, as I can only say now, just to have felt what it was like to read this novel — okay, to have felt it with all its force — but then to have wriggled on quick, either into the thoughts and words that most resembled others I have thought or written before — or else into the bliss of some sort of conferred permission to not have to think, to nor have to put into words this damnedest thing that — to stay as close to the truth of it all as I can — led to thoughts not so much about the novel itself but rather to ones that were saying over and over maybe this is it, maybe I will die where this experience of reading Basin finishes in me, wordless, stuck forever as it is inside.' (Introduction) 
 

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Overland no. 251 Winter 2023 26845190 2023 periodical issue

    'New fiction, poetry, and essay from literary luminaries such as Daniel Browning, Bill Gammage, Jen Craig, Rico Craig, Luoyang Chen, Jane Downing, and Jo Langdon. Featuring cover art from Liss Fenwick's haunting Humpty Doom series.' (Publication summary)

    2023
    pg. 22-38
Last amended 14 Sep 2023 08:13:20
22-38 Figuring-out Basinsmall AustLit logo Overland
Subjects:
  • Basin Scott McCulloch , 2022 single work novel
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