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Crabs single work   short story   satire   science fiction  
Issue Details: First known date: 1972... 1972 Crabs
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Crabs is very neat in everything he does. His movements are almost fussy, but he has so much fight in his delicate frame that they're not fussy at all. Lately he has been eating. When Frank eats one steak, Crab eats two. When Frank has a pint of mil, Crabs drinks two. He spends a lot of time lying on his bed, groaning, because of the food. But he's building up. At night he runs five miles to Clayton. He always means to run back, but he always ends up on the train, hot and sweating and sticking to the seat. His aim is to increase his weight and get a job driving for Allied Panel and Towing. Already he has his licence but he's too small, not tough enough to beat off the competition at a crash scene.' (Introduction)

Adaptations

form y separately published work icon Dead End Drive-In Peter Smalley , ( dir. Brian Trenchard-Smith ) Australia : Springvale Productions , 1986 Z916991 1986 single work film/TV satire science fiction In the 'near' future, drive-in theatres have been turned into concentration camps for the undesirable and unemployed. The prisoners don't really care to escape, because they are fed and they have a place to live that is, in most cases, probably better than anything they might find on the outside. Crabs and his girlfriend Carmen are put into the camp, but all Crabs wants to do is escape.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Works about this Work

Nowhere to Run: Repetition Compulsion and Heterotopia in the Australian Post-apocalypse – From 'Crabs' to Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome Claire Corbett , 2017 single work criticism
— Appears in: Science Fiction Film and Television , vol. 10 no. 3 2017; (p. 329-351)

'This article argues that despite the genre status of the Mad Max films as post-apocalyptic sf, the driving force behind many of the images and concerns of the films derives from aspects of Australian history since colonisation. The article compares the way these themes appear in the Mad Max films to the way they are explored in ‘Crabs’, a 1972 short story by Australian writer Peter Carey. This story was later filmed as Dead End Drive-In, a film which itself draws on the aesthetic already developed through the Mad Max films. I use Freud’s theory of repetition compulsion to explore ways in which history is both remembered and deliberately forgotten through imagery that is dislocated from the past to the ‘future’ and thus in effect to a timeless, ever-present or ever-recurring time. The article also argues that Foucault’s concept of heterotopia (a space that is populated by a selected, heterogenerous group such inmates in a prison), describes the reality of the penal colonies forming the origins of settler Australia. The colony’s status as heterotopia has led to a pervasive sense of the ‘irreality’ of Australia for many non-Indigenous Australians, expressed through numerous artworks: a sense that there is no ‘there’ out there, nowhere to run.' (Publication abstract)

Talking 'Crabs' Peter Carey , Jennifer Mills (interviewer), 2017 single work interview
— Appears in: Overland , Spring vol. 228 no. 2017; (p. 82-84)

'In Spring of 1972, Overland published a short story by a little-known writer from Bacchus Marsh. Two years later, this story opened Peter Carey's debut collection, The Fat Man in History, which launched his career here and internationally; he has since become that rare Australian literary figure who is both immensely popular and critically respected.' (Introduction)

Crabs, Cars and Peter Carey Tim Kroenert , 2008 single work criticism
— Appears in: Eureka Street , 23 December vol. 18 no. 25 2008;
The Difficulties of Translating Peter Carey's Postmodern Fiction into Popular Film Theodore F. Sheckels , 2005 single work criticism
— Appears in: Fabulating Beauty : Perspectives on the Fiction of Peter Carey 2005; (p. 83-100)
Argues that 'the film adaptations of Carey's fiction seem to pull the work away from the postmodern aesthetic and, as a consequence, away from what Carey was positing through its use. The films offer something more modern or realistic, thereby confusing or altering Carey's themes' (81).
Misogyny, Muscles and Machines : Cars and Masculinity in Australian Literature Rebecca Johinke , 2002 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Studies , Winter vol. 15 no. 2 2002; (p. 95-111) Contemporary Issues in Australian Literature 2002; (p. 95-111)
Rebecca Johinke reads Peter Carey's short story 'Crabs' for 'insight into the self-defeating pursuit of normative masculinities in the Australian car culture' (95).
First Flights...or Kangaroo Hops? The Early Work of Australian SF Writers Sean McMullen , 1989 single work column
— Appears in: Science Fiction : A Review of Speculative Literature , vol. 10 no. 2 (Issue 29) 1989; (p. 40-57)
The Difficulties of Translating Peter Carey's Postmodern Fiction into Popular Film Theodore F. Sheckels , 2005 single work criticism
— Appears in: Fabulating Beauty : Perspectives on the Fiction of Peter Carey 2005; (p. 83-100)
Argues that 'the film adaptations of Carey's fiction seem to pull the work away from the postmodern aesthetic and, as a consequence, away from what Carey was positing through its use. The films offer something more modern or realistic, thereby confusing or altering Carey's themes' (81).
Misogyny, Muscles and Machines : Cars and Masculinity in Australian Literature Rebecca Johinke , 2002 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Studies , Winter vol. 15 no. 2 2002; (p. 95-111) Contemporary Issues in Australian Literature 2002; (p. 95-111)
Rebecca Johinke reads Peter Carey's short story 'Crabs' for 'insight into the self-defeating pursuit of normative masculinities in the Australian car culture' (95).
Crabs, Cars and Peter Carey Tim Kroenert , 2008 single work criticism
— Appears in: Eureka Street , 23 December vol. 18 no. 25 2008;
Setting Up an Australian Literature Course: Some Conceptual and Practical Reflections Werner Senn , 1986 single work criticism
— Appears in: Diversity Itself : Essays in Australian Arts and Culture 1986; (p. 63-75)
Last amended 5 Sep 2022 15:55:17
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