Cirrus@Austlit

'Because I was on book tour in Britain as this volume was put together, I had to fall back on the following fairly staid piece I wrote for the Australian Financial Review. There were some images cut from the piece which would have been tolerated in a more robust piece. For example, I described the Australian publishing industry as existing on a narrow ledge of guaranteed time. I am proud of what it has produced on that ledge. I celebrate the diverse commentary, the wealth of creation, now likely to be obliterated by a federal government trumpeting innovation. As the first step on that much-waited-for post-colonial road, they seek to obliterate the very industry equipped to interpret innovation to the citizenry. Similarly, I was tempted to call on Malcolm Turnbull to confront what he knew and cherished in his late, great uncle, Robert Hughes, who would—I am sure—have counselled his nephew by marriage against such a fatal step. And there was one last image cut from the piece, perhaps an exorbitant one but one that’s apposite. When I began to write, and I and other Australian writers, some older, some younger, were trying to create the craft of letters as a modern profession in Australia, it seemed that a well-published Australian was almost as rare and as much a cause for surprise as a goanna riding a bicycle. It isn’t any more, nor should it be.' (Introduction)