AustLit

'It’s rare to know how a book is written. A book catches our eye in a favourite bookshop; we think we must buy it, forget the price; before idling towards the cash register, we might look at what’s said on the back cover, the information on the inside jacket, the photograph (if any) of the author, perhaps the index to see what family of names is being invoked and discussed. We might quickly glance at the preface and acknowledgements, which tell some of the story of how the book came to be, but not usually all that much, or not enough. How is the book first thought? How does it proceed from a mere gleam in its creator’s eye? How does it go from a vague idea involving obscure desires and passions, fantasies and obsessions, to the first shape of an argument, a thesis with a thesis, a narrative where chapters start to relate to each other and that begins to move as if of itself, as if naturally? What I’d like to do in this essay is try to recall the process of getting going, the first moves I made, while recognising that memory is unreliable and always constructing; what memory creates becomes another story. What I seek to do is remember the messiness, how haphazard it was, the luck involved, the clues picked up in conversations over coffee or hearing a seminar or conference paper.' (Introduction)