Cirrus@Austlit

'Where is "somewhere new"? As denoted by the title in his new collection of short stories, Michael Wilding perceives it in a symbolic sense, as a place of potential, away from the centre on the decentralizing margin, a place that enables a fresh new start, a future. It can be just anywhere, in Australia on a Sydney beach or the Balmain part of the harbour, in the United States on Jack Kerouac's beloved Mississippi river which really stands for the river Severn in Wilding's native England, or in North Africa. Michael Wilding's (born 1942) recently published collection of twenty new and selected short stories Somewhere New: New and Selected Stories (1996) shows just how very much alive the short story tradition still is on the Australian literary scene. It draws on seven previous volumes from over thirty years of writing, including classics like, for example, "The Man of Slow Feeling" (1986) and "Reading the Signs" ( 1984 ), the title stories of two of his early short story collections, as well as new, previously uncollected pieces on drugs, politics, sex and the literary life.' (Publication abstract)