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y separately published work icon Vanishing Points selected work   short story  
Issue Details: First known date: 1992... 1992 Vanishing Points
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Australia's acclaimed national treasure delivers two slyly linked novellas - The Genteel Poverty Bus Company and Inventing the Weather - in which "progress" vies unsuccessfully with more feral aspects of an untamed land. When would-be hermit Macintosh Hope, formerly of the Genteel Poverty Bus Company, settles down on a tiny Pacific isle off Australia's coast, he thinks he's found the perfect retreat from the workaday world. And he has - until neighboring Hummock Island is claimed by developer Clifford Truscott as a tourists' paradise. Thus sparks a confrontation pitting the thuggery of progress against the skills and wit of a lone man who proves uncannily adept at remaining the proverbial thorn in the magnate's side. Inventing the Weather finds the same developer's wife fed up and leaving her fatcat husband and their smug, precocious children. Julie Truscott's journey to independence takes her as far as a small mission run by nuns at Bukki Bay. But old ties aren't severed easily, and Clifford soon sets off tremors in the mission community, once he casts a profit-making eye on its enviable spot on the coast. With an unerring sense for language and a shrewd eye for human character and detail, Thea Astley sounds the territory and spirit of her native Gold Coast with the authority of a seasoned denizen of the terrain. ' (Publication summary)

Contents

* Contents derived from the Port Melbourne, South Melbourne - Port Melbourne area, Melbourne - Inner South, Melbourne, Victoria,:Heinemann , 1992 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
The Genteel Poverty Bus Company, Thea Astley , single work short story
For Macintosh Hope, marriage, the 'fustiness of the Romantic poets' in academia, and society no longer hold any attraction. However, solitude and isolation on an uninhabited island in north Queensland do. All seems perfect there for Mac, until the treachery of a greedy developer becomes apparent.
(p. 1-122)
Inventing the Weather, Thea Astley , single work short story
With her marriage to a rapacious property developer failing and her three materialistic children becoming more and more distant, a disillusioned Julie Truscott walks away from her mundane life into a vastly different experience.
(p. 123-234)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Port Melbourne, South Melbourne - Port Melbourne area, Melbourne - Inner South, Melbourne, Victoria,: Heinemann , 1992 .
      image of person or book cover 7678279474281950525.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 234p.
      ISBN: 9780399137709

      Holdings

      Held at: University of Melbourne The University Library
    • New York (City), New York (State),
      c
      United States of America (USA),
      c
      Americas,
      :
      G. P. Putnam's Sons ,
      1992 .
      image of person or book cover 6346601394373435060.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 234p.
      ISBN: 9780399137709
    • Port Melbourne, South Melbourne - Port Melbourne area, Melbourne - Inner South, Melbourne, Victoria,: Minerva , 1993 .
      image of person or book cover 2553936819266611732.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 234p.
      Note/s:
      • portrait: Thea Astley (jacket)
      ISBN: 1863301860
    • London,
      c
      England,
      c
      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Minerva ,
      1995 .
      Extent: 234p.
      ISBN: 0749396075

Other Formats

  • Also braille and sound recording; ebook

Works about this Work

Dementia, Ageism and the Limits of Critique in Thea Astley’s Satire Ann Vickery , 2022 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , December vol. 22 no. 2 2022;
Will the Real Subject Please Stand Up? Autobiographical Voices in Biography Karen Lamb , 2021 single work criticism
— Appears in: Life Writing , vol. 18 no. 1 2021; (p. 25-30) Essays in Life Writing 2021; (p. 24-29)

'Biographers exist in a tight partnership with their chosen subject and there is often during the research and writing an equivalent reflective personal journey for the biographer. This is generally obscured, buried among an overwhelming magnitude of sources while the biographer is simultaneously developing the all-important ‘relationship’ required to sustain the narrative journey ahead. Questions and selections beset the biographer, usually about access to, or veracity of, sources but perhaps there are more personal questions that could be put to the biographer. The many works on the craft of biography or collections about the life-writing journey tell only some of this tale. It is not often enough, however, that we acknowledge how biography can be unusually ‘double-voiced’ in communicating a strong sense of the teller in the tale: the biographer’s own life experience usually does lead them to the biography, but also influences the shaping of the work. These are still ‘tales of craft’ in one sense, but autobiographical reflections in another. Perhaps this very personal insight can only be attempted in the ‘afterlife’ of biography; the quiet moments and years that follow such consuming works. In this article, I reflect on this unusually emotional form of life writing.' (Publication abstract)

Questioning Belonging in Thea Astley's Vanishing Points Serena Saba , 2009 single work criticism
— Appears in: Bernard Hickey, a Roving Cultural Ambassador : Essays in His Memory. 2009; (p. 265-272)
Thea Astley Makes Something Out of Nothing Paul Genoni , 2007 single work criticism
— Appears in: Antipodes , June vol. 21 no. 1 2007; (p. 35-40)
Paul Genoni discusses the concept of 'nothingness' in Thea Astley's writing. He concludes: 'It is in the disharmony betwen mankind and Australian space that Astley finds the impetus for many of her narratives ... And this triumph of landscape, born of the nothingness of Australian space, is the end point of many of Astley's narratives ... For Astley, it is only death that wins release from the tyranny of space and the awful pall of nothingness.'
Thea Astley's Failed Eden Paul Genoni , 2006 single work criticism
— Appears in: Thea Astley's Fictional Worlds 2006; (p. 153-163)
Alive to the Ironies Helen Grutzner , 1992 single work review
— Appears in: Editions , November no. 14 1992; (p. 23)

— Review of Tanglewood Kristin Williamson , 1992 single work novel ; Vanishing Points Thea Astley , 1992 selected work short story
Astley on the Move Janine Burke , 1992 single work review
— Appears in: Overland , Summer no. 129 1992; (p. 80-82)

— Review of Vanishing Points Thea Astley , 1992 selected work short story
Astley's Stylish Journey to Hell Marion Halligan , 1992 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 10-11 October 1992; (p. rev 6)

— Review of Vanishing Points Thea Astley , 1992 selected work short story
Blunt Attack Peter Pierce , 1992 single work review
— Appears in: The Bulletin , 17 November vol. 114 no. 5846 1992; (p. 91)

— Review of Vanishing Points Thea Astley , 1992 selected work short story
Damning Development and Seeking Salvation... Robert L. Ross , 1992 single work review
— Appears in: Antipodes , December vol. 6 no. 2 1992; (p. 150)

— Review of Vanishing Points Thea Astley , 1992 selected work short story
Thea Astley : Exploring the Centre Paul Genoni , 2004 single work criticism
— Appears in: Subverting the Empire : Explorers and Exploration in Australian Fiction 2004; (p. 97-144)
Thea Astley's Failed Eden Paul Genoni , 2006 single work criticism
— Appears in: Thea Astley's Fictional Worlds 2006; (p. 153-163)
Untitled Rosemary Sorensen (interviewer), 1992 single work interview
— Appears in: 24 Hours , November 1992; (p. 29-31)
Thea Astley in conversation with Rosemary Sorensen.
Thea Astley Makes Something Out of Nothing Paul Genoni , 2007 single work criticism
— Appears in: Antipodes , June vol. 21 no. 1 2007; (p. 35-40)
Paul Genoni discusses the concept of 'nothingness' in Thea Astley's writing. He concludes: 'It is in the disharmony betwen mankind and Australian space that Astley finds the impetus for many of her narratives ... And this triumph of landscape, born of the nothingness of Australian space, is the end point of many of Astley's narratives ... For Astley, it is only death that wins release from the tyranny of space and the awful pall of nothingness.'
Questioning Belonging in Thea Astley's Vanishing Points Serena Saba , 2009 single work criticism
— Appears in: Bernard Hickey, a Roving Cultural Ambassador : Essays in His Memory. 2009; (p. 265-272)
Last amended 19 Nov 2019 14:02:41
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