Cirrus@Austlit

'In Street to Street (2012), Brian Castro wrote, ‘It was important that he was making the gesture, running in the opposite direction from a national literature.’ In Chinese Postman, Castro’s protagonist Abraham Quin is ‘through with all that novel-writing; it’s summer reading for bourgeois ladies’. Quin is a Jewish-Chinese former professor, bearing sufficient similarities to the author to function as an avatar. Quin and Castro are the same age, have written the same number of books, and live in the same place (the Adelaide Hills). Sometimes Quin speaks as Quin, sometimes the author chooses to make his ventriloquism evident, and sometimes the identity of the narrator is unclear, but the voice is always raffish, erudite, mercurial.' (Introduction) 

'On this week’s ABR Podcast, we return to the winner of the 2016 Calibre Essay Prize, Michael Winkler’s ‘The Great Red Whale’. As ABR remarked at the time, ‘This excoriating yet remarkably subtle meditation is also a tribute to consolations: landscape, specifically the desert of Central Australia, and literature, notably Moby-Dick.’ Here is Michael Winkler with ‘The Great Red Whale’.' (Introduction)

'The nuclear family has a bad literary rap. As we know from fiction and memoir, the traditional two-heterosexual-parents-and-biological-kids model, a structure that provides stability and nourishment for some, can also be a stricture, a disappointment, even a crucible of cruelty. The opening sentence of Anna Karenina notwithstanding, unhappiness is unhappiness; there are common experiences for the survivors of family difficulty, even when specifics differ.' (Introduction)

'In 'Ars Poetica', written around 19 BCE, Horace postulated 'ut pictura poesis'. This formulation, abbreviated by scholars as u.p.p., has been chewed over in the intervening two millennia. Horace's dictum translates to 'as is painting so is poetry'. U.p.p. was a restatement of the claim by Simonides of Ceos that 'poema pictura loquens, pictura poema silens' (poetry is a speaking picture, painting a silent poetry), but with the order of artforms reversed.' (Publication abstract)

(Introduction)

'We have learned, thank you Bertolt, that there will still be singing in the dark times. Singing such as Ben Walter’s What Fear Was, constructed within and about the metastasising climate catastrophe. It is a short story collection of particularity—most obviously about a place, Tasmania, but also about a time, the howling now.'  (Introduction)

'Pain was Joe Grim's self-expression, his livelihood and reason for being. In 1908-09 the Italian-American boxer toured Australia, losing fights but amazing crowds with his showmanship and extraordinary physical resilience. On the east coast Grim played a supporting role in the Jack Johnson-Tommy Burns Fight of the Century; on the west coast he was committed to an insane asylum. In between he played with the concept and reality of pain in a shocking manner not witnessed before or since. Award-winning writer Michael Winkler braids the story of Grim in Australia and meditations on pain with thoughts on masculinity and vulnerability, plus questionable jokes, in a haymaker of experimental non-fiction.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'The Aboriginal tracker is a stock character in certain Australian films, employed as set dressing, catalyst, curio. Although fictional trackers have been celebrated on celluloid, few real trackers have been given life within the national memory. Some people may recall Billy Dargin and his role in locating and shooting Ben Hall. Others might think of Dubbo’s Tracker Riley, or Dick-a-Dick, who found the missing Cooper and Duff children near Natimuk in 1864 when they had been given up for dead.' (Introduction)

'Philip Larkin famously suggested that ‘they fuck you up, your mum and dad’, but the alternative is usually worse. Twenty years before Larkin wrote ‘This Be the Verse’, his compatriot John Bowlby published Maternal Care and Mental Health (1951), which described profound mental health consequences when infants are denied parental intimacy. Bowlby delineated the centrality of this ‘lasting psychological connectedness’ to well-being in later life, something cruelly withheld from many members of Australia’s Stolen Generations.

'Bruce Trevorrow and Wally Carr were born in the mid-1950s into Aboriginal families that were incredibly poor, living in makeshift huts, foraging for bush food to supplement supplies, and terrified of visits from welfare officers. When Trevorrow was one, he was removed from his Ngarrindjeri family to live with a non-Indigenous family. Carr remained with his own Wiradjuri family. They were very different men with some crucial factors in common. Both achieved national prominence for different reasons. Both died prematurely.' (Introduction)

'In Alexis Wright’s novel Carpentaria (2006), Girlie claims, ‘If you ever want to find out about anything in your vicinity, you have to talk to the mad people.’ There are a lot of mad people in Wright’s biography of Aboriginal activist, thinker, and provocateur ‘Tracker’ Tilmouth. He is probably the maddest of all, in the Kerouacian sense of ‘mad to live, mad to talk’, but, according to his mate Doug Turner, his ‘madness gave him sanity’'. (Introduction)

'These one hundred and fifty true stories give voice to the many men and women who played an important part in establishing Australia's pioneering spirit but who mostly didn't make it into the history books.

'Drawn from the Australian Stockman's Hall of Fame 'Unsung Heroes' database, they reveal the characters who were drovers, property owners, shearers, missionaries and amateur explorers. They bring outback history alive as do tales of the bush folk who built the fences, baked the bread, taught the children, provided entertainment, shod the horses, tended the sick and enforced the law.

'From veteran expeditioner Ned Ryan, to possum trapper Harry Stevens, Boer War veteran Jack Kyle-Little and eccentric pioneers Charles and Cora Chalmers, these are stories of resilience, courage and luck, about people with more grit than an outback sandstorm. ' (Publisher's blurb)

'What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stronger is a book of inspirational stories from Australian A-League football star Archie Thompson that shares his love of the game and his family through the highs and lows.

'What does it take to become a success on or off the field? How can setbacks make you stronger? Where do you find guidance on the road to the top? Archie Thompson is one of Australia's best loved footballers, a ten-year veteran of the Socceroos and marquee player for the A-League's power club, Melbourne Victory.

'Football fans love the way Archie plays with a smile on his face and this book, like the man himself, is straight-shooting. He writes on everything from the importance of discipline and loyalty to how to build confidence in yourself and overcome life's challenges while enjoying the good times.

'His stories will inspire anyone who plays sport or wants to make a difference in life. Archie tells how he has been inspired by legendary teammates like Harry Kewell and friend Tim Cahill and guided by some of the greats in the game. But as he explains, the drive to become the best you can be is found within.' (From the publisher's website.)