Cirrus@Austlit

'They’re a weird mob, psychogeographers. Always drifting through boondocks and “liminal spaces”, interrogating their forsakenness. Iain Sinclair in rust-industrial London, Martin Amis bound for the airport on foot. It’s not as dull as it might sound, but it is essentially weird.'  (Introduction)

'The subtitle promises “the remarkable life” of Edith Coleman, but remarkable how? As Danielle Clode tells it, it comes across as remarkable in the sense of noteworthy, rather than extraordinary. Which is fine – by all means, let’s take note – but is there a book in it?' (Introduction)

'The centrepiece of Skin in the Game is an account of an interview with Helen Garner almost 40 years ago. Sonya Voumard, then an 18-year-old cadet journalist, chose Garner as her subject for a university assignment. The interview was convivial and frank – so frank that Garner was shocked when she read the finished piece. “It is always traumatic to see the way another person has perceived you,” she wrote to Voumard, “especially when you feel you have talked a little too freely …” If Garner “learnt a lesson” from the experience, so did her interviewer – although it would take more than 30 years and a second interview with Garner, reappraising the first, to grasp fully the ways in which the disjunct between journalist and subject can leave the latter “slightly pulled askew” (and not just on the page).' (Introduction)

'The story of Lale Sokolov’s three years in Auschwitz-Birkenau was recounted by him to Heather Morris, in Melbourne, as he neared the age of 90. Gita, his wife of almost 60 years, had recently died and Lale was eager, before he joined her, to tell his story, so that “It would never happen again.” Morris was introduced as a potential biographer.' (Introduction)

'In Mirror Sydney, inspired by psychogeography, Vanessa Berry embarks on “drifts” through inauspicious Sydney – hollowed-out factory districts, heedless highways and all-but-forgotten suburban arcades. She anatomises the contents of a lost-property office, and visits sites associated with elephants. The dreamy, daggy landmarks are features of a more “introspective” city than you’d find in the travel guides – or even on the street, unless tipped off by Berry’s slightly cockeyed curiosity. She also creates hand-drawn mumblecore maps that she likens to star charts, 'revealing places as constellations rather than the linear pathways of the written word'.' (Introduction)

'When he was 22 and a mint-new member of the Victorian parliament, Alfred Deakin won wild applause with a maiden speech in which he tendered his resignation. In a political career spanning almost 40 years, Deakin would nearly always be on the verge of resigning.' (Introduction)

'Eric Blair died for want of a typist. Self-exiled to a remote Scottish island and hollowed out by tuberculosis, he quailed at the prospect of typing a clean manuscript copy of his just-completed novel. Despite an SOS to his publishers, no typist eventuated. If he were to meet his end-of-1948 deadline, he’d have to do the job himself. And so he did, propped up in bed with the typewriter on a tea tray. But three days after typing “THE END”, Blair suffered his final collapse.' (Introduction)