'For a long time Western Sydney has been the political flash-point of the nation, but it has been absent from Australian literature. Luke Carman’s first book of fiction is about to change all that: a collection of monologues and stories which tells it how it is on Australia’s cultural frontier. His young, self-conscious but determined hero navigates his way through the complications of his divorced family, and an often perilous social world, with its Fobs, Lebbbos, Greek, Serbs, Grubby Boys and scumbag Aussies, friends and enemies. He loves Whitman and Kerouac, Leonard Cohen and Henry Rollins, is awkward with girls, and has an invisible friend called Tom. His neighbour Wessam tells him he should write a book called How to Be Gay – and now he has. Carman’s style is packed with thought and energy: it captures the voices of the street, and conveys fear and anger, beauty and affection, with a restless intensity.' (Publisher's blurb)
'Once overlooked in Australian literature, recent writing from Western Sydney is now among the field’s most dynamic and vital. Over the past two decades, Western Sydney, one of Australia’s most culturally and linguistically diverse communities, has also become a locus for Islamophobia, racism and anti-multicultural sentiment. This sentiment was bolstered by John Howard’s Coalition government between 1996 and 2007 through the creation of a ‘citizen norm’ mythologising Anglo-Celtic identity, normative expressions of masculinity, and neoliberal individualism (Johnson 197). This period also saw a sharp rise in discrimination against Muslim Australians following the MV Tampa controversy, the fabricated ‘Children Overboard’ scandal, the September 11 attacks on New York City, and the trial and conviction of a group of young Lebanese Muslim men, led by Bilal Skaf, for a series of violent gang rapes perpetrated against young women in Sydney. In this essay, I read three works by writers from Western Sydney as resistance to Howard’s citizen norm: Luke Carman’s An Elegant Young Man (2013), Peter Polites’s Down the Hume (2017) and Michael Mohammed Ahmad’s The Lebs (2018). I examine the works’ depictions of suburban locality and masculinity in the context of Howard-era multicultural Australia.' (Publication abstract)
'Some people say ‘West’ like it is something wrong, like ice-cream that fell in a gutter. I think West is like my brother’s music, too much bass so you end up dancing like your body parts don’t fit together and laughing all at the same time. That’s what West is: shiny cars and loud things, people coming, people going – movement. Those who don’t know any better, they come into the neighbourhood and lock their windows and drive on through, never stopping before they get somewhere else.
'These are the first few lines of my second book The Incredible Here and Now. I can’t say that I like them very much. I don’t think they work. The rhythm is great, some of the images too, but really what blows the whole thing is that it’s too restrictive, too reductive an image of what western Sydney is to be that useful.' (Introduction)
'Some people say ‘West’ like it is something wrong, like ice-cream that fell in a gutter. I think West is like my brother’s music, too much bass so you end up dancing like your body parts don’t fit together and laughing all at the same time. That’s what West is: shiny cars and loud things, people coming, people going – movement. Those who don’t know any better, they come into the neighbourhood and lock their windows and drive on through, never stopping before they get somewhere else.
'These are the first few lines of my second book The Incredible Here and Now. I can’t say that I like them very much. I don’t think they work. The rhythm is great, some of the images too, but really what blows the whole thing is that it’s too restrictive, too reductive an image of what western Sydney is to be that useful.' (Introduction)
'Once overlooked in Australian literature, recent writing from Western Sydney is now among the field’s most dynamic and vital. Over the past two decades, Western Sydney, one of Australia’s most culturally and linguistically diverse communities, has also become a locus for Islamophobia, racism and anti-multicultural sentiment. This sentiment was bolstered by John Howard’s Coalition government between 1996 and 2007 through the creation of a ‘citizen norm’ mythologising Anglo-Celtic identity, normative expressions of masculinity, and neoliberal individualism (Johnson 197). This period also saw a sharp rise in discrimination against Muslim Australians following the MV Tampa controversy, the fabricated ‘Children Overboard’ scandal, the September 11 attacks on New York City, and the trial and conviction of a group of young Lebanese Muslim men, led by Bilal Skaf, for a series of violent gang rapes perpetrated against young women in Sydney. In this essay, I read three works by writers from Western Sydney as resistance to Howard’s citizen norm: Luke Carman’s An Elegant Young Man (2013), Peter Polites’s Down the Hume (2017) and Michael Mohammed Ahmad’s The Lebs (2018). I examine the works’ depictions of suburban locality and masculinity in the context of Howard-era multicultural Australia.' (Publication abstract)
