Other Places single work   short story  
Issue Details: First known date: 1992... 1992 Other Places
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Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon The House of Breathing Gail Jones , Fremantle : Fremantle Press , 1992 Z508629 1992 selected work short story (taught in 2 units)

    'The invasion of East Timor, the sinking of the Titanic, Freud's encounter with an "imbecile dwarf," astronomy, pregnancy, Tiananmen Square, a remote Aboriginal community: these historical episodes and narratives inspire the fourteen superb and engaging short stories in The House of Breathing, winner of four major Australian literary prizes. Concerned with the extremes of human experience, Jones's stories give fictional form to a wide range of philosophical concerns: cultural imperialism, political and sexual repression, the impact of modern technology on culture and consciousness.'

    Source: Publisher's blurb (US ed.)

    Fremantle : Fremantle Press , 1992
    pg. 28-51
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Australian Women's Stories : An Oxford Anthology Kerryn Goldsworthy (editor), South Melbourne : Oxford University Press , 1999 Z198049 1999 anthology short story extract

    'This anthology, unprecedented for its subject, gathers together twenty-nine of the sharpest and most entertaining stories written by Australian women from the early nineteenth century to the late 1990s. Selected by acclaimed critic and writer Kerryn Goldsworthy--editor of the highly successful Australian Love Stories--the stories cover a wide range of styles and subject matter. Included in the collection are the works of well-known writers such as Henry Handel Richardson and Christina Stead, those of contemporary authors Elizabeth Jolley, Beverley Farmer, Kate Grenville, Carmel Bird, and Beth Yahp, and a generous selection from the work of Asian, Aboriginal, and European Australian writers. With a strong local or regional emphasis the volume vividly moves readers from Thea Astley's North Queensland and Carmel Bird's Tasmania to Helen Garner's Carlton and Fitzroy. This volume is sure to be the definitive introduction for years to come to the rich and accomplished tradition of fiction by Australian women.' (Publication summary) 

    South Melbourne : Oxford University Press , 1999
    pg. 284-306

Works about this Work

Australian Popular Fiction and the Moral Drama of East Timor David Callahan , 2013 single work criticism
— Appears in: Understanding Timor-Leste 2013 : Proceedings of the Timor-Leste Studies Association Conference, 15-16 July 2013 2013; (p. 246-250)
'From the invasion of East Timor by Indonesia in 1975 until the referendum on independence in 1999 and up until the present, East Timor has been a place whose destiny Australian governments have felt they have the right to intervene in. Indeed, this assumed right goes back to the invasion of neutral Portuguese Timor by Australian forces in World War II, thereby condemning thousands of Timorese to their deaths at the hands of Japanese soldiers. Of this initial assumption of Australia’s agency in East Timor there has been surprisingly little creative remediation, although there has been much and moving commentary in nonfiction. The marginality of Portuguese Timor to Australia in the 1940s may be read both in the decision to invade and in subsequent uninterest in interpreting what is one of Australia's closest neighbours. Although the Indonesian invasion and brutal occupation vastly increased the amount of coverage given to the territory, somehow this too was almost never accompanied by the analytical possibilities of creative work. From Tony Maniaty’s anguished representation of the period immediately before the invasion, The Children Must Dance (1987), through Gail Jones’s theoretically reflective short story ‘Other Places’ (1992), Bill Green’s satire on Australian political immorality, Cleaning Up (1993), or Libby Gleeson’s book for children Refuge (1998), to take some of the registers through which the country was dealt with, East Timor was rarely processed in Australia through the protocols of imaginative narrative (on these texts, see Callahan 2010; 2012a; 2012b).' (Introduction)
Failing to Meet in the Middle : East Timor and Gail Jones's "Other Places" David Callahan , 2012 single work criticism
— Appears in: Antipodes , December vol. 26 no. 2 2012; (p. 137-142)
History and Shame : East Timor in Australian Fictions David Callahan , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: Interventions : International Journal of Postcolonial Studies , November vol. 12 no. 3 2010; (p. 401-414)
This essay examines a series of Australian texts in an attempt to perceive the ways in which East Timor has functioned as a test of the operation of Australian memory and the processing of national shame over the failure of the nation to aid a neighbouring people who had aided Australia at great cost during the Second World War. After introducing the notion of shame and the contrast between official Australian policy and public sentiment over the issue of East Timor from the date of the Indonesian invasion in 1975, a contrast rooted in the nation's sense of itself as being a sponsor of freedom, democracy and the fair go, the essay examines a series of fictional texts dealing with East Timor in some way, and then returns to the concept of shame and its relevance in this context. The texts dealt with include fiction for adults and children: Tony Maniaty's The Children Must Dance (1984), Gail Jones's Other Places (1992), Bill Green's Cleaning Up (1993), Kerry Collison's The Timor Man (1998), Libby Gleeson's Refuge (1998) and Josef Vondra's No-name Bird (2000), along with the Australian-Canadian miniseries Answered by Fire (2006) and the Australian film Balibo (Robert Connolly, 2009). As expected, concerned observers share many features of their reaction to events in East Timor, but inevitably, as they read East Timor they are also reading Australia and its relation to an ethics of conviction that might have dealt more honourably with the invasion and oppression on its doorstep. The analysis draws on the work of Jeffrey Olick, Avishai Margalit and Michael Morgan in its approach to regret, shame and memory.
History and Shame : East Timor in Australian Fictions David Callahan , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: Interventions : International Journal of Postcolonial Studies , November vol. 12 no. 3 2010; (p. 401-414)
This essay examines a series of Australian texts in an attempt to perceive the ways in which East Timor has functioned as a test of the operation of Australian memory and the processing of national shame over the failure of the nation to aid a neighbouring people who had aided Australia at great cost during the Second World War. After introducing the notion of shame and the contrast between official Australian policy and public sentiment over the issue of East Timor from the date of the Indonesian invasion in 1975, a contrast rooted in the nation's sense of itself as being a sponsor of freedom, democracy and the fair go, the essay examines a series of fictional texts dealing with East Timor in some way, and then returns to the concept of shame and its relevance in this context. The texts dealt with include fiction for adults and children: Tony Maniaty's The Children Must Dance (1984), Gail Jones's Other Places (1992), Bill Green's Cleaning Up (1993), Kerry Collison's The Timor Man (1998), Libby Gleeson's Refuge (1998) and Josef Vondra's No-name Bird (2000), along with the Australian-Canadian miniseries Answered by Fire (2006) and the Australian film Balibo (Robert Connolly, 2009). As expected, concerned observers share many features of their reaction to events in East Timor, but inevitably, as they read East Timor they are also reading Australia and its relation to an ethics of conviction that might have dealt more honourably with the invasion and oppression on its doorstep. The analysis draws on the work of Jeffrey Olick, Avishai Margalit and Michael Morgan in its approach to regret, shame and memory.
Failing to Meet in the Middle : East Timor and Gail Jones's "Other Places" David Callahan , 2012 single work criticism
— Appears in: Antipodes , December vol. 26 no. 2 2012; (p. 137-142)
Australian Popular Fiction and the Moral Drama of East Timor David Callahan , 2013 single work criticism
— Appears in: Understanding Timor-Leste 2013 : Proceedings of the Timor-Leste Studies Association Conference, 15-16 July 2013 2013; (p. 246-250)
'From the invasion of East Timor by Indonesia in 1975 until the referendum on independence in 1999 and up until the present, East Timor has been a place whose destiny Australian governments have felt they have the right to intervene in. Indeed, this assumed right goes back to the invasion of neutral Portuguese Timor by Australian forces in World War II, thereby condemning thousands of Timorese to their deaths at the hands of Japanese soldiers. Of this initial assumption of Australia’s agency in East Timor there has been surprisingly little creative remediation, although there has been much and moving commentary in nonfiction. The marginality of Portuguese Timor to Australia in the 1940s may be read both in the decision to invade and in subsequent uninterest in interpreting what is one of Australia's closest neighbours. Although the Indonesian invasion and brutal occupation vastly increased the amount of coverage given to the territory, somehow this too was almost never accompanied by the analytical possibilities of creative work. From Tony Maniaty’s anguished representation of the period immediately before the invasion, The Children Must Dance (1987), through Gail Jones’s theoretically reflective short story ‘Other Places’ (1992), Bill Green’s satire on Australian political immorality, Cleaning Up (1993), or Libby Gleeson’s book for children Refuge (1998), to take some of the registers through which the country was dealt with, East Timor was rarely processed in Australia through the protocols of imaginative narrative (on these texts, see Callahan 2010; 2012a; 2012b).' (Introduction)
Last amended 28 Jan 2003 15:17:39
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