Cirrus@Austlit

'In this week’s ABR Podcast, Frank Moorhouse biographer Matthew Lamb tells of his subject’s battle to defend Australian authors and the founding of Copyright Agency in 1974. Listen to Matthew Lamb with ‘Copyright and its discontents: Frank Moorhouse’s battle to defend authors’'. (Introduction)

'It is only a coincidence that my book Frank Moorhouse: Strange paths, the first in a two-volume cultural biography of the Australian author, ends in 1974 – the same year that Copyright Agency was incorporated – and that it was published in time to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of this incorporation. As Moorhouse himself always argued, such coincidences, chance happenings, and historical accidents are often far more important in shaping our culture than we like to concede.' (Introduction) 

'In October 1975, at a talk in Wollongong, Frank Moorhouse discussed the first project for which he deliberately undertook archival and historical research – a feature film called Between Wars. This process would become integral to Frank’s work.' (Introduction)

“My writing allows me flight from society through solitude while permitting me to rejoin society on some of my own terms through the trading of the finished work with the society. My imaginative narrative gives me relief from prevaility and strident ideologies by allowing me the heresy of decadence (as in erotica). Namely, revenge against normality, reversal of normality and regression from normality. My imaginative narrative is relief from prevailing self by allowing the potential self, the discarded self, the rejected self and the non-self to have play. My imaginative narrative is relief from privacy by allowing exposure of self and the network of self.” ~ Frank Moorhouse, 1985, private telex

'Frank Moorhouse was legendary in Australian literary and cultural life, the author of a huge and diverse body of work – essays, short stories, journalism, scripts, the iconic Edith Trilogy – an unapologetic activist, intellectual, libertarian and champion of freedom of speech and sexual self determination. Though he lived his life publicly, his private stories have not been shared, the many paths he forged left unexamined, until now.

'Matthew Lamb shared many a luncheon table with Moorhouse and immersed himself in the archived life and cultural ephemera of Frank’s world. This landmark study, from Moorhouse’s own publisher, the first in a projected two volumes, is the fascinating and comprehensive story of how one of Australia’s most original writers and pioneer of the discontinuous narrative came to be.

'Fearless, sardonic and utterly dedicated to his creative life, his relationships with friends, other writers and lovers were complex and long-lasting. Lamb shares the strange paths that Frank traversed and gives us a cultural history of the times that shaped Moorhouse and which Moorhouse himself helped to shape.'(Publication summary)

The Review of Australian Fiction described itself as follows:

The Review of Australian Fiction is an online journal dedicated to publishing and promoting Australian writing both locally and overseas. There are four volumes of the journal each year, with each volume containing six issues. Issues, published every two weeks, each contain two stories. The first story in each issue is written by an established Australian author, who selects an emerging author to provide a second story for the issue. The emerging writers of today will become tomorrow's established writers, who will return to introduce the new faces of the future. Half the cover price for both single issues and subscriptions goes directly to the authors. The rest we'll use to promote the journal far and wide. (Source: Review of Australian Fiction website, http://reviewofaustralianfiction.com/)
 

The periodical ran independently, without external funding support.

In January 2018, the journal announced its cessation, with volume 24, issue 6 as its final issue. Back issues remain accessible, and the publishers announced plans for a series of anthologies of previously published fiction.