Issue Details: First known date: 2015... 2015 Quiet Conversations in a Very Noisy Room : Tilting at Windmills
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Phillip Edmonds’ short story, ‘The Soapbox’, published in the Griffith Review in 2008, is about an Australian named Warwick who moves to London and works at the Ministry of the Arts, where he takes ‘responsibility’ for the public forums at Speakers Corner — a task necessary because ‘the number of voluntary speakers at Hyde Park’ has ‘been dwindling, perhaps due to people getting older and the internet’. Warwick tries different strategies, but nothing draws audiences beyond groups of confused tourists. The ministry seems pleased with his efforts (‘the important thing’, he is told is ‘that things be seen to be done as much as being done’), but Warwick resigns in frustration and decides to return to Australia, though not before erecting a homemade soapbox in Hyde Park as a symbolic protest. The story ends with the narrator telling us that Warwick ‘stopped stressing about whether anyone was listening and gave up on being ashamed of daring to dream’.' (Introduction)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Sydney Review of Books October 2015 8942668 2015 periodical issue 2015
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon The Australian Face : Essays from the Sydney Review of Books James Ley (editor), Catriona Menzies-Pike (editor), Artarmon : Sydney Review of Books Giramondo Publishing , 2017 12141177 2017 anthology essay

    'The Sydney Review of Books is Australia’s leading space for longform literary criticism. Now celebrating five years online, the SRB has published more than five hundred essays by almost two hundred writers. To mark this occasion, The Australian Face collects some of the best essays published in the SRB on Australian fiction, poetry and non-fiction. The essays in this anthology are contributions to the ongoing argument about the condition and purpose and evolving shape of Australian literature. They reflect the ways in which discussions about the state of the literary culture are constantly reaching beyond themselves to consider wider cultural and political issues.

    'The Sydney Review of Books was established in 2013 out of frustration at the diminishing public space for Australian criticism on literature. There’s even less space for literature in our newspapers and broadcast media now. The Sydney Review of Books, however, is thriving, as the essays in The Australian Face show. Here, you’ll read essays on well-known figures such as Christos Tsiolkas, Alexis Wright, Michelle de Kretser and Helen Garner, alongside considerations of the work of writers who less frequently receive mainstream attention, such as Lesbia Harford and Moya Costello.' (Publication summary)

    Artarmon : Sydney Review of Books Giramondo Publishing , 2017
    pg. 126-145
Last amended 30 May 2019 07:30:46
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126-145 Quiet Conversations in a Very Noisy Room : Tilting at Windmillssmall AustLit logo
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