AustLit
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'Was Australian culture born modern or has it always been behind the game, never quite modern enough? Was it always already or only always almost modern? David Carter’s essays examine the complex engagements of Australian writers, artists, editors and consumers with 20th-century modernity, social and political crisis, and the impact of modernisms. Always Almost Modern ranges from the great mid-century novels of authors such as Eleanor Dark and M. Barnard Eldershaw to the unprecedented bestseller that was They’re a Weird Mob, from famous to largely forgotten local magazines and to film and television, and from the avant-garde to nationalism, communism and the middlebrow. Chapters engage with key themes in contemporary literary and cultural studies, exploring new ways of understanding Australian culture in terms of its modernity and transnationalism.' (Publisher's blurb)
Notes
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Contents indexed selectively.
Contents
- Weird Scribblings on the Beach : Originality and Belatedness in Australian Cultural Discourse, single work criticism (p. 1-12)
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Critics, Writers, Intellectuals : Australian Literature and Its Criticism,
single work
criticism
David Carter 'describes the background to [the] "theoretical turn" in Australian literary studies: the struggle to establish Australian literature in the university: the institutionalisation of Australian literary studies... the emergence of counter currents: and the belated impact of post—structuralist theories—not least via the rapid impact of cultural studies since the early 1980s.' Source: Modern Australian Criticism and Theory (2010)
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'Esprit de Nation' and Popular Modernity : Aussie Magazine 1920-1931,
single work
criticism
'This article examines the intersection of the populist nationalism and popular modernity in Aussie (1920-1931), a commercial magazine of opinion, review and entertainment that flourished in Sydney between the wars. Aussie has been overlooked in comparison to its better-known contemporaries Smith's Weekly and the Bulletin, despite occupying the same public-commercial sphere and same discursive space as those magazines.
Aussie had a significant past as the main soldiers' paper of the First World War; in its post-war format it built a sizeable circulation on both sides of the Tasman; and for more than a decade it published the major Australian writers and cartoonists of the day. This article seeks not only to restore the magazine to its position as a significant player in the print culture of its period but also to use this case study to explore methodological questions about the historical interpretation of magazines as complex texts and the nature of Australian modernity. In particular it explores the gap between the nationalist editorial platform of the magazine and the investment in new forms of consumer and gender modernity found elsewhere in its pages. The magazine's ambivalence towards the modern was institutional, not merely ideological, a function of its position in a modernising print marketplace'. Source: David Carter.
- 'Screamers in Bedlam' : Vision 1923-24, single work criticism (p. 89-111)
- Paris, Moscow, Melbourne: Some Avant-Garde Australian Little Magazines, 1930-1934, single work criticism (p. 112-127)
- The Mystery of the Missing Middlebrow, or, The C(o)urse of Good Taste, single work criticism (p. 128-152)
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'Some Means of Learning of the Best New Books' : All About Books and the Modern Reader,
single work
criticism
The article proposes a rethinking of the notion of the middle-brow in terms of the proliferation of 'new books' in the interwar period, through an analysis of the review journal All About Books.
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Realism, Documentary, Socialist Realism
Documenting and Criticising Society,
single work
criticism
(p. 167-185)
Note: With title: Realism, Documentary, Socialist Realism
- 'Current History Looks Apocalyptic' : Barnard Eldershaw, Utopia and the Literary Intellectual, 1930s-1940s, single work criticism (p. 186-201)
- Communism and Carnival : Ralph de Boissiere's Crown Jewel and Its Australian Context, single work criticism (p. 202-214)
- O'Grady, John see 'Culotta, Nino' : Popular Authorship, Duplicity and Celebrity, single work criticism (p. 215-231)
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The Wide Brown Land on the Silver Screen,
single work
criticism
Analyses representations of land and nature in Australian cinema and television, with a focus on the significant changes from the 1980s in the kind of landscape and nature which most fully signify the nation and in their complex, politically volatile engagements with Aboriginality.
- Good Readers and Good Citizens : Literature, Media and the Nation, single work criticism (p. 253-272)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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‘This Long and Shining Finger of the Sea Itself’ : Sydney Harbour and Regional Cosmopolitanism in Eleanor Dark’s Waterway
2017
single work
criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 17 no. 1 2017;'In Eleanor Dark’s novel Waterway (1938), Professor Channon is prompted by the ominous international headline ‘Failure of Peace Talks’ to imagine the world from a global perspective (120). Channon feels himself metaphorically ‘lifted away from the earth … seeing it from an incredible distance, and with an incredible, an all-embracing comprehension’ (119-20). This move outward from a located perspective to ‘a more detached overview of a wider global space’ signifies a cosmopolitan viewpoint, ‘in which the viewing subject rises above the placebound attachments of the nation-state to take the measure of the world as a wider totality’ (Hegglund 8-9). Yet even this global view is mediated by Channon’s position from within ‘a great island continent alone in its south sea’ (121). Gazing from a ‘vast distance,’ he views Europe as ‘the patches where parasitic man had lived longest and most densely,’ and from which humankind ‘went out to infect fresh lands’ (120). This description of old world Europe as ‘parasitic’ provides a glimpse of resistant nationalism, reflecting Channon’s location within one of the ‘fresh lands’ affected by colonisation. Channon is ultimately unable to sustain a ‘Godlike’ perspective in this scene, desiring ‘nothing but to return’ to local place (121). Although his view initially ‘vaults beyond the bounds of national affiliation’ (Alexander and Moran 4), this move outward does not ‘nullify an affective attachment to the more grounded locations of human attachment’ (Hegglund 20). Channon’s return to the ‘shabby home … of his own humanity’ brings a renewed sense of connection to ‘the sun-warmed rail of the gate’ and ‘the faint breeze [which] ruffled the hair back from his forehead’ (122).' (Introduction)
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Review : Always Almost Modern: Australian Print Cultures and Modernity.
2015
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Historical Studies , vol. 46 no. 2 2015; (p. 320-321)
— Review of Always Almost Modern : Australian Print Cultures and Modernity 2013 multi chapter work criticism -
Brigid Rooney, of David Carter, Always Almost Modern: Australian Print Cultures and Modernity
2015
single work
review
— Appears in: Southerly , vol. 75 no. 1 2015; (p. 174-181)
— Review of Always Almost Modern : Australian Print Cultures and Modernity 2013 multi chapter work criticism -
Literary Culture
2014
single work
correspondence
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , June-July no. 362 2014; (p. 3) -
Professorial Talk : Finding the Middle Way
2014
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , May no. 361 2014; (p. 57-58)
— Review of Always Almost Modern : Australian Print Cultures and Modernity 2013 multi chapter work criticism
-
Professorial Talk : Finding the Middle Way
2014
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , May no. 361 2014; (p. 57-58)
— Review of Always Almost Modern : Australian Print Cultures and Modernity 2013 multi chapter work criticism -
Brigid Rooney, of David Carter, Always Almost Modern: Australian Print Cultures and Modernity
2015
single work
review
— Appears in: Southerly , vol. 75 no. 1 2015; (p. 174-181)
— Review of Always Almost Modern : Australian Print Cultures and Modernity 2013 multi chapter work criticism -
Review : Always Almost Modern: Australian Print Cultures and Modernity.
2015
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Historical Studies , vol. 46 no. 2 2015; (p. 320-321)
— Review of Always Almost Modern : Australian Print Cultures and Modernity 2013 multi chapter work criticism -
Literary Culture
2014
single work
correspondence
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , June-July no. 362 2014; (p. 3) -
‘This Long and Shining Finger of the Sea Itself’ : Sydney Harbour and Regional Cosmopolitanism in Eleanor Dark’s Waterway
2017
single work
criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 17 no. 1 2017;'In Eleanor Dark’s novel Waterway (1938), Professor Channon is prompted by the ominous international headline ‘Failure of Peace Talks’ to imagine the world from a global perspective (120). Channon feels himself metaphorically ‘lifted away from the earth … seeing it from an incredible distance, and with an incredible, an all-embracing comprehension’ (119-20). This move outward from a located perspective to ‘a more detached overview of a wider global space’ signifies a cosmopolitan viewpoint, ‘in which the viewing subject rises above the placebound attachments of the nation-state to take the measure of the world as a wider totality’ (Hegglund 8-9). Yet even this global view is mediated by Channon’s position from within ‘a great island continent alone in its south sea’ (121). Gazing from a ‘vast distance,’ he views Europe as ‘the patches where parasitic man had lived longest and most densely,’ and from which humankind ‘went out to infect fresh lands’ (120). This description of old world Europe as ‘parasitic’ provides a glimpse of resistant nationalism, reflecting Channon’s location within one of the ‘fresh lands’ affected by colonisation. Channon is ultimately unable to sustain a ‘Godlike’ perspective in this scene, desiring ‘nothing but to return’ to local place (121). Although his view initially ‘vaults beyond the bounds of national affiliation’ (Alexander and Moran 4), this move outward does not ‘nullify an affective attachment to the more grounded locations of human attachment’ (Hegglund 20). Channon’s return to the ‘shabby home … of his own humanity’ brings a renewed sense of connection to ‘the sun-warmed rail of the gate’ and ‘the faint breeze [which] ruffled the hair back from his forehead’ (122).' (Introduction)