Cirrus@Austlit

'In a post-apocalyptic Australian landscape dominated by free-wheeling cyborgs, a young man goes in search of his lost lover who has been kidnapped by a rogue AI truck – the Brumby King.

'Along the way, he teams with Sinnerman, an independent truck with its own reasons for hating the Brumby King.

'Before his final confrontation with the brumbies, he must learn more about the broken-down world and his own place in it, and face his worst fears.

'This genre-bending work of literary biopunk mixes the mad fun of Mad Max II with the idiosyncratic testimony of works like Peter Carey’s True History of the Kelly Gang or Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting.' (Publisher's blurb)

'Cock is an anthology of stories that question and problematise the male perspective from within.

'There's a heavy dose of irony in our use of the word Cock in the title. The male viewpoint is the dominant one in Western culture, and to speak as white and male is to occupy a position of power.

'This is not a 'men's movement' project, nor is it a backlash against feminism. It doesn't aim to redress some kind of perceived imbalance in representations of men. That's why we felt it was important it should also be open to women writers.

'Cock is an attempt to look at a theme that doesn't really get much attention in the mainstream, despite the fact that the male perspective, the male gaze, is the dominant, defining and default position in our cultural products.

'And in fact, one of the effects of this dominance is that maleness gets reduced, and simplified, and over-determined. We start to take for granted that we know what it means. We start to lose sight of other possibilities for masculinity.

'So we wanted to do a project that would mess with that, and hopefully shift around and overlay some different meanings about what it is to be male.Cock is a genuine attempt to interrogate masculinity. And hopefully you'll enjoy the fruits of our labour.'

Source: Anthology website: http://www.cock-anthology.com/about.html
Sighted: 10/40/2007