NLA image of person
Ivor Indyk Ivor Indyk i(A27288 works by)
Gender: Male
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

Works By

Preview all
1 Multilingual Affect Eda Gunaydin , Ivor Indyk , 2024 single work obituary (for Sneja Gunew )
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , February 2024;
1 y separately published work icon Alexis Wright in Conversation Ivor Indyk (interviewer), 2023 26349207 2023 single work podcast interview

'This episode features a live event recording taken of a conversation between Alexis Wright and Ivor Indyk, to celebrate the publication of Wright’s new novel, Praiseworthy.

'Alexis Wright is a remarkable writer, originally hailing from the from the Waanyi nation in the Gulf of Carpentaria. Her novel Carpentaria won the 2007 Miles Franklin award, and Wright was awarded the 2018 Stella Prize for her biography of “Tracker" Tilmouth. Praiseworthy is Wright’s fourth novel.' (Introduction)

1 Antigone Kefala and the Accented Voice in Australian Poetry Ivor Indyk , 2021 single work criticism
— Appears in: Antigone Kefala : New Australian Modernities 2021; (p. 233)
1 y separately published work icon Live Recording : PiO on Heide Ivor Indyk (interviewer), 2020 23473912 2020 single work podcast interview

'Award-winning poet PiO chats with Giramondo publisher Ivor Indyk about poetry, on and off the page. This is a live recording of an online event hosted via Zoom during the Covid-19 crisis.'  (Production summary)

1 What Kind of Literary History Is A History of Books? Ivor Indyk , 2020 single work criticism
— Appears in: Gerald Murnane : Another World in This One 2020; (p. 153-164)

'This is one of those occasions where I feel I am wearing too many hats, and I am not sure what to do with the excess ones. This is because I am speaking of Gerald Murnane in a number of different roles – as a friend, a critic, a publisher, an editor – though I should admit that Murnane doesn’t need much editing, at least in my experience, since what I suggest as an editor tends to get rejected anyway. As he busies himself behind the bar in the room here as I talk now, I cannot be sure whether he’s listening , or whether, like the narrator at the beginning of Border Districts, he has resolved to guard his eyes, so as to be more alert to what might appear at the edges of his attention.1 But perhaps the greater discomfort for me, is to talk as both a publisher and as a critic. As a publisher there’s a sense of excitement when you’re producing a book, a kind of intimacy in the production of it, which as a critic you’re not meant to feel; you keep the book at a distance, the better to form a judgement of it. Nevertheless, when I’m preparing a book for publication I do read it critically and develop ideas about it that I think are significant, and should be conveyed to readers, particularly those who have not read Murnane before. I’m only allowed a little over one hundred words, in the blurb on the back cover, to address the reader directly, and there is not a lot one can say there, though there is a lot one wants to say. I have found, especially being here today, that much of what I wanted to say has now already been said, or is being said, as the critical discourse catches up with Murnane’s works of fiction, and his idiosyncracies as an author. And though this makes me feel proud as a publisher it makes feel humble as a critic, because it’s other people making the points that I would have liked to make, and they are making them more thoroughly than I could have done.' (Introduction(

 

1 A Really Long Prospect : Elizabeth Harrower's Fallen World Ivor Indyk , 2017 single work criticism
— Appears in: Elizabeth Harrower : Critical Essays 2017; (p. 21-27)
'When I first read The Long Prospect (1958) some thirty years ago, what impressed me was the expressivity of Harrower’s writing, its power in capturing the drama and surge of emotion. It strikes you immediately, in the first pages of the novel, which have the formidable and oppressive grandmother Lilian intruding into the flat of her one-time boarder, the young scientist Thea, with “her eyes on swivels” – and not just her eyes working overtime, but her eyebrows too, “one ironic eyebrow cocked and ready to greet Thea”, and “one drooping disdainfully”. 1 As so often in Harrower, the drama of emotion is played out in the face – the characters constantly scan each other’s faces, they twist incredulously or curve maliciously, they beam with admiration or are bleached with dismay. Their mouths are similarly expressive – close-lipped with resolution, quivering with anger, clamped shut with rage. They exhibit several different kinds of laughter, smiles, grins and giggles – most of them fairly chilling. And then of course the eyes – cold, downcast, brightly sullen, wild with accusation or fixed with tension, “frank and yet guarded” (125). Within moments of her intrusion into the younger woman’s flat, Lilian’s face and indeed the nervous, endlessly mobile dispositions of her body in the confined space, have registered a whole parade of emotions: disdain, resentment, disapproval, wonder, disappointment, incredulity, anger, excitement, annoyance, jealousy, awe and derision.' (Introduction)
1 The Mastery of Π.o. Fitzroy : The Biography Ivor Indyk , 2016 single work review
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , April 2016; The Australian Face : Essays from the Sydney Review of Books 2017; (p. 173-193)

— Review of Fitzroy : The Biography TT. O , 2015 selected work poetry

'Les Murray is the contemporary Australian poet one most associates with the celebration of a particular place, but with the publication of the monumental Fitzroy: The Biography, that mantle must surely pass to π.O. Murray’s 40 acres at Bunyah on the north coast of NSW is one-sixth the size of the inner city Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy, though considerably larger, and much more sparsely populated, if you take into account the memory of the larger family territory commemorated in poems like ‘Their Cities, Their Universities’, and ‘Aspects of Language and War on the Gloucester Road’. At little more than 240 acres, π.O.’s Fitzroy is the smallest suburb in Australia, and the most densely populated.' (Introduction)

1 Patrick White's Expressionism Ivor Indyk , 2015 single work criticism
— Appears in: Patrick White beyond the Grave : New Critical Perspectives 2015; (p. 131-140)
'In 'Patrick White's Expressionism', Ivor Indyk identifies White's exaggeration of small, complex emotional jitters, placing his in the context of both an expressive mode of Australian literature and modernism at large, describing (with eloquent self-reflexivity) the experience of of reading a Patrick White novel', affording insight thereby also into the significance of material objects in White's writing.' (Introduction 8)
1 1 4 September 2015 : The Cult of the Middlebrow Ivor Indyk , 2015 single work essay
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , September 2015;
1 Patron Brandis Ivor Indyk , 2015 single work criticism
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , May 2015;

'The Australia Council’s six-year funding program, on which the Sydney Review of Books and other literary journals had been depending, has been suspended. If there is no corresponding program forthcoming from the Ministry for the Arts, our existence will be threatened. The cancellation of the June round of funding will have an immediate effect on the publishers of Australian literary titles, requiring the cancellation or postponement of some of those titles. Senator Brandis claims that the transferral of funds to the Ministry for the Arts means only a 12–13% reduction in the budget of the Australia Council. When the government-directed programs, which are quarantined from cuts, are taken out of the equation, the reduction is more like 27%. Literature has always been the poor relation to the other arts when it comes to funding – if, in addition, you take out the $6 million transferred from the Australia Council budget for the new Book Council of Australia, the situation for us looks pretty grim.' (Publication abstract)

1 Ivor Indyk on the Stella Prize Ivor Indyk , 2015 single work column
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , March 2015;
1 Fiction As Alchemy : An Extract from an Interview with Gerald Murnane Ivor Indyk , 2014 single work interview
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , September 2014;
1 In Conversation : David Malouf and Ivor Indyk Ivor Indyk , 2014 single work interview
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 14 no. 2 2014;

'This is the record of a conversation between David Malouf, Ivor Indyk and audience members at the 31 May 2013 David Malouf Symposium, held at the North Sydney campus of Australian Catholic University. The speakers reflect upon the papers delivered at the Symposium.' (Publication abstract)

1 The Provincial and the Princess Ivor Indyk , 2013- single work review
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , March 2013; Critic Swallows Book : Ten Years of the Sydney Review of Books 2023;

— Review of The Voyage Murray Bail , 2012 single work novel
1 The 'Journals' of Antigone Kefala Ivor Indyk , 2013 single work criticism
— Appears in: Antigone Kefala : A Writer's Journey 2013; (p. 221-233)

Ivor Indyk points to the shortcomings of recent criticism of Kefala's Sydney Journals and concludes: 'The consolation one offers oneself, when confronted with the patronising criticism of Kefala and, more frequently in the recent past, the outright exclusion of her writing, is to hope that time will bring the recognition she deserves.' (232)

1 Give Baroque Writing a Break Ivor Indyk , 2012 single work column
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 27 - 28 October 2012; (p. 23)
1 Provincialism and Encyclopaedism Ivor Indyk , 2011 single work criticism
— Appears in: Island , Summer no. 127 2011; (p. 78-92)
'As a term, provincialism invariably gets a bad press. It is associated in most people's minds with narrow-mindedness, ignorance, belatedness, awkwardness and even foolishness. For this reason, it is difficult to use in a positive way, as a critical concept, even though Australian culture is undoubtedly provincial in just about any way one might think about it. Allied concepts like 'the marginal' or, more recently, 'the local', have done a lot better, having been granted subversive and even revolutionary powers, but only because they have been distanced from the qualities that make 'the provincial' such an embarrassing term to use in the first place. In this way, it could be argued, the baby has been thrown out with the bath water.' Ivor Indyk
1 Everyone's a Critic... Ivor Indyk Reviews The Slap Ivor Indyk , 2011 single work review
— Appears in: The Sun-Herald , 23 October 2011; (p. 6)

— Review of The Slap 2011 series - publisher film/TV
1 Editorial Ivor Indyk , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: Heat , no. 24 (New Series) 2010; (p. 7-12)
1 Rejected by America? Some Tensions in Australian–American Literary Relations Louise Poland , Ivor Indyk , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: Reading Across the Pacific : Australia-United States Intellectual Histories 2010; (p. 309-322)

'This chapter focuses on the period from the mid-1970s to the late 1980s, a watershed period in Australia-US literary relations, which saw the publication in the US of Australian novelists Peter Carey, David Malouf, Jessica Anderson, Thea Astley, Elizabeth Jolley, Helen Garner, Tim Winton and Beverley Farmer among others, but which was also crossed by tensions and contradictions which led to confusion, disappointment, lost opportunities, and sometimes the outright rejection of important Australian authors and their books. Among these tensions, we look at three in particular: the promising but limited role played by the multinational publisher (in this case Penguin Books) offering Australian titles through its US affiliate (Viking Penguin); the intervention by literary agents in Australia - US literary publishing relations; and the difference in values between the two cultures, which served to hinder the appreciation of important works of Australian writing.' (p. 309)

X