AustLit

'After undergoing electroconvulsive treatment, the author powerfully documents how art helped her recover her memory, autonomy and sense of self' 

'In this week’s ABR Podcast, Catriona Menzies-Pike reviews Richard Flanagan’s new hybrid work Question 7. Menzies-Pike argues that Flanagan’s ‘sweeping engagement with history ultimately brings the author back to himself’ in ways that limit understanding of the present tense. Catriona Menzies-Pike is a literary critic and former editor of the Sydney Review of Books. Listen to ‘The Measure of things: Flanagan’s looping book of questions’, published in the November issue of ABR.' (Production summary)

'When Richard Flanagan left school, he tells us early in Question 7, he worked as a chainman or surveyor’s labourer, ‘a job centuries old set to vanish only a few years later with the advent of digital technology’. Chainmen would have followed the surveyors who mapped Van Diemen’s Land and the rest of the British Empire; their task was to ‘drag the twenty-two-yard chain with its hundred links with which the world was measured’. The clanking surveyor’s measure evokes convict chains, and it demonstrates one of the principles at the heart of this book: that the past lives and redounds in the present. The chainman is a descendant of convicts, and he insists that ‘there was no straight line of history. There was only a circle.’' (Introduction)

'This paper presents the Sydney Review of Books, which I edited, as a case study in the intersecting conflicts about value in contemporary Australian literature. It is a patchy and highly partial account of negative feedback and complaints that I have received about the SRB, especially those that bear on the question of what criticism should do, a topic that is never far from the question of what literature is for. Some generic complaints that fall within the scope of this paper: the publication of negative reviews, the failure to publish enough negative reviews; the deliberate scuttling the sales of authors by way of negative reviews; infelicitous pairings of critics and books; writing that is too scholarly or theoretical, writing that is insufficiently scholarly; too many reviews of Australian books, not enough reviews of Australian books, the failure to review certain books; the publication of critical writing that is insufficiently analytical, critical writing that shirks evaluation; the capitulation to identity politics/cancel culture/political correctness, the failure to represent the diversity of Australian literary culture. A journal of criticism that did not field highly critical feedback would be a dull enterprise. What these complaints reveal is a set of conflicts between audiences and, dare I say, stakeholders, around the economic, social and aesthetic value of literature. I am sorry to say that it will all be anonymised – and that reflects the great breach between what Australian critics, writers and readers are willing to say in public about the value of literature, and what gets said in private channels. As ceaseless proclamations about the value of contemporary Australian literature bolster an increasingly hyperbolic public discourse about Australian literature, narratives of crisis and decline circulate in the backchannels.' (Publication abstract)

'In 2023 the Sydney Review of Books celebrates a decade online and the publication of more than a thousand essays and longform reviews of Australian and international literature. Over these ten years the SRB has cleared a unique space for serious reflection on literature and for critical thinking about our culture more broadly. The journal has been shaped by the diverse aesthetic, political and critical dispositions of our contributors, each of whom has different questions to ask contemporary literature. As they’ve asked these questions, they’ve guided a bold and independent public conversation about literature, and especially about the many forms of Australian literature.

'Critic Swallows Book brings together twenty-two essays that together demonstrate the eclecticism of the Sydney Review of Books. It includes essays on decolonising Australian literature and revisiting the classics, on blockbuster fiction and book-length poetry, on modernism in the Antipodes and reading during the pandemic. Essays on Susan Sontag and Rita Felski sit alongside critical considerations of Murray Bail and Joan London, of Evelyn Araluen and Samia Khatun.

'Contributors: Timmah Ball, Paola Balla, Alix Beeston, Tegan Bennett Daylight, Andrew Brooks, Bonny Cassidy, Mridula Nath Chakraborty, Tom Clark, Ali Cobby Eckermann, Ben Etherington, Ross Gibson, Ivor Indyk, Yumna Kassab, Louis Klee, Jeanine Leane, James Ley, Catriona Menzies-Pike, Drusilla Modjeska, Alys Moody, Suneeta Peres da Costa, Oliver Reeson.' (Publication summary)

'Picture Trent Dalton sitting on a Brisbane street corner. A typewriter on a folding table in front of him, a hand-made sign stuck to it, upon which is written the words, ‘sentimental writer seeks stories’. Here he is, the most bankable Australian writer of the decade: a storyteller on the street, a man on the tools, a displaced sentimental bloke trying to make sense of twenty-first century life. And this is how he wrote his latest book, a work of non-fiction called Love Stories, the title of which is self-explanatory. Dalton has kept the ecstasy and epiphany dials turned to eleven since the release of Boy Swallows Universe in 2018 – and Australian readers love him.' (Introduction)

'The lives of writers are a topic of perennial fascination to readers - and indeed to other writers. And yet the writer at work is often a mythologised figure, distant from the cares of the day. In Open Secrets, Australian writers reflect upon the material conditions that give rise to their writing practice. What is it that writers do with their days? These essays document writing lives defined as much by procrastination, distraction and economic precarity as by desire and imagination, by aesthetic and intellectual commitments. Labour is at the heart of this collection: creative labour, yes, but also the day jobs, side gigs, and care work that make space for writing. Bringing together an eclectic and distinctive set of writers, Open Secrets is a rich and provocative account of contemporary Australian literature.

'The writers included in the collection are Sunil Badami, Vanessa Berry, Miro Bilbrough, Luke Carman, Lauren Carroll Harris, Maddee Clark, Justin Clemens, Lisa Fuller, Elena Gomez, Eda Gunaydin, Tom Lee, James Ley, Fiona Kelly McGregor, Oliver Mol, Suneeta Peres da Costa, Ellena Savage, McKenzie Wark, Laura Elizabeth Woollett and Fiona Wright.

'Open Secrets is edited by Catriona Menzies-Pike, editor of the Sydney Review of Book. It follows the collections Second City and The Australian Face, both published by the Sydney Review of Books.' (Publication summary)

'Second City is a showcase of the diverse literary talents that make Sydney’s Western Suburbs such a fertile region for writers.

'Beginning with Prime Minister’s Award-winning author Felicity Castagna’s warning about the dangers of cultural labelling, this collection of essays takes resistance against conformity and uncritical consensus as one of its central themes. From Aleesha Paz’s call to recognise the revolutionary act of public knitting to Frances An’s ‘counter-revolutionary’ attack on the repressive clichés of ‘women of colour’, Sheila Ngoc Pham on the importance of education in crossing social and ethnic boundaries, and May Ngo’s cosmopolitan take on the significance of the shopping mall, the collection offers complex and humane insights into the dynamic relationships between class, culture, family, and love. Eda Gunaydin’s ‘Second City’, from which this collection takes its title, is both a political autobiography and an elegy for a Parramatta that has been lost to gentrification and redevelopment. Zohra Aly and Raaza Jamshed confront the prejudices which oppose Muslim identity in the suburbs, the one in the building of a mosque, the other in the naming of her child. Rawah Arja writes in a comic vein on the complexity of the Lebanese-Australian family, Martin Reyes on the overlay of experiences as a hike in the Dharawal National Park recalls an earlier trek in Bangkong Kahoy Valley in the Phillipines. Finally, Yumna Kassab’s essay on Jorge Luis Borges reminds us that Western Sydney writing can be represented by no single form, opinion, style, poetics, or state of mind.

'The cultural backgrounds represented here include Cambodian, Pakistani, Lebanese, Vietnamese, Italian, Filipino, South American, Iraqi and Turkish.'

Source : publisher's blurb

'Sydney Review of Books was established in January 2013 with the aim of creating an online forum where Australia's critics could write at length about literature and cultural issues. The journal is now into its fifth year of existence, during which time it has published more than five hundred essays on Australian and international literature and culture. These essays have been widely circulated and discussed; several have been anthologised or translated; some of them have been controversial. But this is the first collection of Sydney Review of Books essays to appear in book form, and we offer it as a small but representative sample of the essays we have been proud to publish over the past five years.'  (Introduction)

'The Sydney Review of Books is Australia’s leading space for longform literary criticism. Now celebrating five years online, the SRB has published more than five hundred essays by almost two hundred writers. To mark this occasion, The Australian Face collects some of the best essays published in the SRB on Australian fiction, poetry and non-fiction. The essays in this anthology are contributions to the ongoing argument about the condition and purpose and evolving shape of Australian literature. They reflect the ways in which discussions about the state of the literary culture are constantly reaching beyond themselves to consider wider cultural and political issues.

'The Sydney Review of Books was established in 2013 out of frustration at the diminishing public space for Australian criticism on literature. There’s even less space for literature in our newspapers and broadcast media now. The Sydney Review of Books, however, is thriving, as the essays in The Australian Face show. Here, you’ll read essays on well-known figures such as Christos Tsiolkas, Alexis Wright, Michelle de Kretser and Helen Garner, alongside considerations of the work of writers who less frequently receive mainstream attention, such as Lesbia Harford and Moya Costello.' (Publication summary)

'Congratulations to the shortlisted critics! The applications for the fellowships impressed with their critical acuity, their literary qualities, their curiosity and their diversity. My thanks are due to the fellowship judges, Ben Etherington, Michelle Cahill and Shannon Burns, for reading and appraising the applications with care and diligence.' (Introduction)

'Fret not, lonely hearts, there are plenty more fish in the sea. Are there? This homily is usually rolled out to console the broken-hearted, to persuade them that the tides will soon wash up an acceptable substitute for their lost love. The Plenty of Fish online dating megasite boasts over three million active daily users, which suggests that the line works as a hook for those seeking love, companionship, romance or sex. It’s a figure of speech that might soon become obsolete.' (Introduction)

'On the first page of Julia Leigh’s memoir Avalanche, the author injects herself with artificial hormones: ‘I did this knowing that no matter how hard I hoped, no matter what I tried, chances were I’d never have a child.’ This is a book about hope, effort, and chance. Hope: the possibility of a child ‘conjured out of the ether’; the brittle optimism that sustains Leigh through years of fertility treatments. Effort: the brutal physical, psychological and financial costs of assisted fertility treatments. Chance: the statistics that, when finally in clear view, reveal that hope to have been remote all along.' (Introduction)

'Catriona Menzies-Pike came late to running and early to feminism. One of the least athletic kids in her high school class, she headed off to uni intent on expanding her mind, not improving her physical prowess. Then, at twenty, she lost her parents in a light plane crash. As she struggled with grief and the responsibility of looking after her three younger sisters, Catriona’s life took an unexpected and uncertain path through her twenties. Physically worn out, she decided to train for a marathon.' (Publication summary)