Cirrus@Austlit

'They say everyone has a book inside them. Some people are unfortunate enough to have more than one.'  (Introduction)

'Fans of Soviet history and/or the 2017 comedy film, The Death of Stalin, will remember Levrentiy Pavlovich Beria as the ruthless would-be successor to a certain General Secretary left lying on the floor in a puddle of his own urine following a stroke because, as historian Simon Sebag Montefiore puts it, “his comrades and his doctors were too terrified to treat him in case he was merely drunk”.' (Introduction)

'In 1922, self-exiled English novelist D.H. Lawrence arrived on Australian shores with his German wife Frieda. Travelling by steamboat from Italy to New Mexico via Sri Lanka, the pair disembarked in Sydney to spend a bit of time rediscovering their land legs. Lawrence was already a well-known writer by this point, with works such as Sons and Lovers and The Rainbow having been published in the decade before. However, this is to say little of his and Frieda’s financial situation.'  (Introduction)

'In the final pages of her memoir Datsun Angel, writer and filmmaker Anna Broinowski identifies the book as a “call-to-arms critique [of] the eighties patriarchy”. She questions whether women like herself – that is, the well-educated, sexually liberated beneficiaries of second-wave feminism – are really better off than their 1940s counterparts.' (Introduction)

'An early exchange of Christmas presents leads to a violent outcome for a young drunk couple. A schoolboy finds himself at the centre of a cruel playground bullying ritual. A teenage girl lies to her mother about a sexual assault involving her little sister. A father ruins grand final day for the son who idolises him. 

'The thirteen stories in Luke Johnson’s debut collection do not shy away from life’s brutalities. Nor do they overlook those moments of genuine  intimacy, humour and revelation that imbue the tragic with purpose and with pathos. Set in regional Australia in an era before mobile phones and the internet, these stories will remind you of who and what we are beneath all the cool digital interfaces: animals, burning with ferocity for a mouthful of life’s flesh.'

Source : publisher's blurb

'In a 1987 interview with Kevin Brophy and Nolan Tyrrell for Going Down Swinging, Bruce Pascoe explained his reason for starting Australian Short Stories magazine five years earlier:

As a writer of short stories I was disappointed with what was happening to my stories when they were published. Apart from the few stories I got published in The Sun and The Sydney Sun-Herald, I wasn’t getting any readers… I started Australian Short Stories because I was offended by the rates of pay, offended by the lack of readership, and felt that the intelligence of the readership was still there. (Pascoe quoted in Going Down Swinging 1987) 

'For short story writers living in Australia in 2018, the disappointing situation Pascoe describes is more or less unrecognisable – newspapers accepting submissions for short fiction, indeed!' (Introduction)

'One imagines that thumbtacked to the pinboard above H C Gildfind’s writing desk (or perhaps tattooed on the top of her dominant typing hand) are the words, ‘Happiness is repetition.’ If they hadn’t been quoted midway through the penultimate story of her debut collection The Worry Front (or perhaps misquoted: is this a reduction of Milan Kundera’s well-known ‘happiness is the longing for repetition’? then I’d have been forced to pencil them into the text myself.'  (Introduction)

'I should have known straight away, the second I spotted him in the doorway. He was dressed in his dirty blue mechanic's overalls and standing very straight. he never stood this straight. Mum was always chipping him for slouching. 'Maybe if you got off my back,' he used to joke. On this day he didn't look jokey. He looked tall and confused, like a student who had been sent to the classroom on an errand but couldn't remember what it was.' (Introduction)

'My dad woke me early to go down town and buy streamers. It was 1989 and our team was in the grand final for the second year running. I was eight. The year before we’d been in the grand final against the Bulldogs and had been beaten 24-12. It was a hard loss for a seven year old. This year we were in the grand final against the Raiders. I didn’t think we could lose, since in our house the Raiders were made fun of for looking like Milo tins. This was my mum’s contribution to the footy, deciding what pantry items the teams’ jerseys most looked like. We were a traditional household in this way.'  (Publication abstract)