Aquifer single work   short story  
Issue Details: First known date: 2000... 2000 Aquifer
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Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Granta Australia : The New New World no. 70 Ian Jack (editor), Granta , 2000 Z498386 2000 periodical issue Granta , 2000 pg. 39-52
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon The Best Australian Stories 2001 Peter Craven (editor), Melbourne : Black Inc. , 2001 Z936532 2001 anthology short story Melbourne : Black Inc. , 2001 pg. 248-262
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon The Turning Tim Winton , Sydney : Picador , 2004 Z1146280 2004 selected work short story (taught in 12 units)

    The Turning comprises seventeen overlapping stories of second thoughts and mid-life regret set in the brooding small-town world of coastal Western Australia. Here are turnings of all kinds - changes of heart, nasty surprises, slow awakenings, sudden detours - where people struggle against the terrible weight of the past and challenge the lives they've made for themselves.

    These elegiac stories examine the darkness and frailty of ordinary people and celebrate the moments when the light shines through.

    Sydney : Picador , 2004
    pg. 37-53
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon The Best Australian Stories : A Ten Year Collection Collingwood : Black Inc. , 2011 Z1771915 2011 anthology short story (taught in 1 units) Collingwood : Black Inc. , 2011 pg. 288-299
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Where There's Smoke : Outstanding Short Stories by Australian Men Black Inc. (editor), Collingwood : Black Inc. , 2015 8700359 2015 anthology short story

    'Where There's Smoke presents outstanding short fiction by Australia's finest male writers. These are tales of love, secrets, doubt and torment, the everyday and the extraordinary.

    'A man sleeps at the site of a massacre and wakes refreshed. An unassuming piano tuner is sent off to contribute to the war effort. A woman with Alzheimer's is dragged along by her interfering son to visit Uluru.

    'Brilliant, shocking and profound, these tales will leave you reeling in ways that only a great short story can.

    'Chris Womersley Murray Bail Tim Winton Rodney Hall David Malouf Tony Birch Shane Maloney Ryan O'Neill Nam Le Kim Scott

    'and many more' (Publication summary)

    Collingwood : Black Inc. , 2015

Works about this Work

Who is My Neighbour? : Tim Winton’s ‘Aquifer’ and the Ghosts of Cloudstreet Peter Mathews , 2017 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , February vol. 32 no. 1 2017;

'The psychology of guilt as debt is a recurrent theme in Tim Winton’s fiction. A number of scholars have recently examined the theme of haunting in Winton’s Cloudstreet (1991), arguing that the ghosts which appear in the story represent an engagement with Australia’s colonial past, in particular the mistreatment of its Indigenous peoples. The latest of these, Michael R. Griffiths, highlights the shortcomings of Winton’s treatment of this theme, contending that Winton’s text might be read as a kind of excuse, in the name of naïveté, for colonial abuses. Given that Nicholas Birns (among others) has noted a new maturity in Winton’s work from The Turning (2004) onward, a fresh examination of such themes in Winton’s work is warranted. This essay does so through a reading of the short story ‘Aquifer’. Examining the story’s treatment of the psychology of guilt and debt, the essay explores how Winton tries to resolve the moral and historical problems he raises in regard to Australian culture through the ethical figure of the neighbour, drawn in particular from the biblical parable of the Good Samaritan. By showing the centrality of the neighbour to Winton’s work through references to In the Winter Dark (1988), Cloudstreet, Breath (2009), ‘Aquifer,’ and a newspaper editorial by Winton on the humanitarian treatment of refugees, this paper seeks to provide a new critical window through which to understand his evolving ethical ideas about Australia’s past and future.'

Source: Abstract.

Environmental Degradation, Indigenous Displacement, and Non-Indigenous Belonging : Suburbia in Tim Winton's 'Aquifer' and Liam Davison's 'Neary's Horse' Nathanael O'Reilly , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: Commonwealth , Spring vol. 32 no. 2 2010; (p. 47-60)
y separately published work icon White Vanishing : A Settler Australian Hegemonic Textual Strategy, 1789-2006 Elspeth Tilley , Z1408578 2007 single work thesis 'This thesis conducts a discourse analysis of the 'white vanishing trope' - stories about white Australians who become lost or disappear - in white Australian texts from 1789 to 2006...[T]he white vanishing trope narrates a specific, and remarkably constant, relationship between indigenous bodies, white bodies, time, and space, in which white settlers are victims and survivors, whose occupation of Australia is constructed as inevitable and right.' - from author's abstract (p.ix)
y separately published work icon White Vanishing : A Settler Australian Hegemonic Textual Strategy, 1789-2006 Elspeth Tilley , Z1408578 2007 single work thesis 'This thesis conducts a discourse analysis of the 'white vanishing trope' - stories about white Australians who become lost or disappear - in white Australian texts from 1789 to 2006...[T]he white vanishing trope narrates a specific, and remarkably constant, relationship between indigenous bodies, white bodies, time, and space, in which white settlers are victims and survivors, whose occupation of Australia is constructed as inevitable and right.' - from author's abstract (p.ix)
Environmental Degradation, Indigenous Displacement, and Non-Indigenous Belonging : Suburbia in Tim Winton's 'Aquifer' and Liam Davison's 'Neary's Horse' Nathanael O'Reilly , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: Commonwealth , Spring vol. 32 no. 2 2010; (p. 47-60)
Who is My Neighbour? : Tim Winton’s ‘Aquifer’ and the Ghosts of Cloudstreet Peter Mathews , 2017 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , February vol. 32 no. 1 2017;

'The psychology of guilt as debt is a recurrent theme in Tim Winton’s fiction. A number of scholars have recently examined the theme of haunting in Winton’s Cloudstreet (1991), arguing that the ghosts which appear in the story represent an engagement with Australia’s colonial past, in particular the mistreatment of its Indigenous peoples. The latest of these, Michael R. Griffiths, highlights the shortcomings of Winton’s treatment of this theme, contending that Winton’s text might be read as a kind of excuse, in the name of naïveté, for colonial abuses. Given that Nicholas Birns (among others) has noted a new maturity in Winton’s work from The Turning (2004) onward, a fresh examination of such themes in Winton’s work is warranted. This essay does so through a reading of the short story ‘Aquifer’. Examining the story’s treatment of the psychology of guilt and debt, the essay explores how Winton tries to resolve the moral and historical problems he raises in regard to Australian culture through the ethical figure of the neighbour, drawn in particular from the biblical parable of the Good Samaritan. By showing the centrality of the neighbour to Winton’s work through references to In the Winter Dark (1988), Cloudstreet, Breath (2009), ‘Aquifer,’ and a newspaper editorial by Winton on the humanitarian treatment of refugees, this paper seeks to provide a new critical window through which to understand his evolving ethical ideas about Australia’s past and future.'

Source: Abstract.

Last amended 19 Sep 2011 15:33:30
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