Cirrus@Austlit

'ON 30 OCTOBER 1932, about 2,000 people gathered to celebrate the unveiling of a monument to Adam Lindsay Gordon at the intersection of Spring and Macarthur Streets in Melbourne. It depicts the poet in riding boots with his sleeves rolled up, clutching, somewhat disconsolately, a book in one hand and a pencil in the other. A passage from the poem ‘Ye Wearie Wayfarer’ appears on the column’s base:

Two things stand like stone,

Kindness in another’s trouble,

Courage in your own.' (Introduction)

'When Ben Roberts-Smith brought his suit against Fairfax Media and journalists Chris Masters and Nick McKenzie, much commentary ensued about the chilling effect of Australian defamation law. But Masters’ new book, Flawed Hero: Truth, lies and war crimes, shows that investigative journalists struggle against far more than just the legal system.' (Introduction)   

'MOST EVENINGS, WE walk through the wetlands taking shape within a hundred-­year-­old golf course in Elwood in Melbourne’s south-­east. In 2018, community activists persuaded Bayside council that the poorly patronised Elsternwick Golf Club could be rewilded, restoring, in the words of the architectural plan, a ‘native parkland, wetland and urban forest…that echo the beauty of the land before the invasion of concrete and asphalt…and provide refuge and tranquillity for people and wildlife’. Some of that beauty can already be found in the partly completed Yalukit Willam Nature Reserve.' (Introduction)

'Most of us associate terra nullius – the doctrine that legalised the English occupation of a purportedly “empty” Australia – with 1788 and the very beginnings of white settlement. But Thomas Ford and Justin Clemens explain that the concept became explicit only considerably later – inspired by, of all things, road tolls.' (Introduction)

'The cover of Jim Davidson’s Emperors in Lilliput juxtaposes a photograph of Meanjin’s Clem Christesen smoking a pipe with a picture of Overland’s Stephen Murray-Smith lighting his.'

'Katharine Susannah Prichard published her first short story in 1899 and her final novel in 1967. At last we have a definitive biography, a book tracing her life and the formation of the Australian literary culture she helped to create.' (Introduction)

'Genuine radicalism depends on the provision of hope. It provokes through a scandalous insistence that life can be otherwise, that we aren't doomed to economic and environmental decline, and that the future can exceed than the past.'

'Jeff Sparrow is one of Australia's leading public intellectuals. From great controversies to the heroes and villains of our time, Provocations raises arguments that matter.

'History gets made by actions, not by words alone. Yet these pages are filled with the kind of words that inspire action. By showing us that Australia has a history of slavery it needs to reckon with. That amidst the turmoil of catastrophic weather events, Christmas beetles are disappearing as we look the other way. That while war was once an anomaly in a world increasingly devoted to peace, no one believes that anymore.

'In Provocations, Jeff Sparrow brings together some of his most challenging and continuously relevant work alongside daring new writing.'  (Publication summary)

'As this posthumous collection shows, Inga Clendinnen’s faith in the public defined her work. “I … think my readers are as enthralled by the tough issues as I am,” she writes. “ ‘Popular history’ need not mean – must not mean – dumbed-down history.”' (Introduction)

'“I can tell our stories. I can bear witness. But I have to be honest. Some days bearing witness doesn’t seem like enough.” That’s novelist and editor Sophie Cunningham in the essay collection Living with the Anthropocene. Her unease highlights a dilemma haunting the entire book: Why write when the world’s ending – or, at least, changing in extraordinary ways? What can authors offer in the Anthropocene?' (Introduction)

'At the Edge of the Solid World begins with the death of a child and then gets much, much darker. As such, it’s not a book for everyone. But it’s a significant literary achievement, nonetheless.' (Introduction)

'Manning’s publisher locked him in his apartment until he finished one of the strangest, most compelling books from the first world war'

'A bohemian whose work was often censored, Norman Lindsay’s book of delightfully nasty characters and superb illustrations became a beloved children’s classic.'  (Introduction)

'In his astonishing book At the Mind’s Limits: Contemplations by a survivor on Auschwitz and its realities (1980), Jean Améry devotes a chapter to intellectuals in the Nazi camp. An essayist and novelist himself, he focuses on how writers made sense of their incarceration. ‘Did intellectual background and an intellectual basic disposition help a camp prisoner in the decisive moments?’ he asks. ‘Did they make survival easier for him?’'  (Introduction)

'Literary festivals and festivals of ideas are, almost by definition, curated, since directors necessarily choose between the potential speakers available to them to draw up their final program. If you attend a festival, you’re meant to notice the selection of guests, in the same way that art fanciers at an exhibition appreciate the careful juxtaposition of particular works. It’s thus entirely legitimate to criticise event organisers for programming certain speakers and not others. Indeed, it’s what you’re supposed to do. You’re meant to critically assess a festival: you’re meant to notice the curatorial decisions underlying the schedule and express your approval or disapproval.'  (Introduction)