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Tobias McCorkell Tobias McCorkell i(12990218 works by)
Gender: Male
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Works By

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1 y separately published work icon Cop This Lot : Rewriting the Myth of a Classless Nation Tobias McCorkell (editor), Melbourne : Scribe , 2021 20519435 2021 anthology essay prose

'Stories of not belonging in a classless society.

'Class intersects with almost every aspect of our lives, from where we go to school, to what we wear and eat, to how we speak, and how we make a living. Yet we almost never talk about it, and when we do, it’s often to make claims about how much Australia loves its ‘battlers’ and blue-collar underdogs. But what’s it really like to be economically disadvantaged in this country? To be denied a place in a rapidly expanding ‘middle class’ as the gulf between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ widens? And is it possible to cross class lines in a country that barely acknowledges those lines exist?

'In Cop This Lot, diverse voices of all ages — from the well-known to the recently discovered — deliver their stories and experiences with verve, courage, and humour. Collectively, these essays challenge Australia’s myths and truths about its national character and delve deeply into the nation’s complex relationship with social class.

'With contributions from: Roger Averill, Timmah Ball, Shannon Burns, Andy Butler, Luke Carman, Felicity Castagna, Zoe Douglas-Kinghorn, Chris Fleming, Nayuka Gorrie, Rick Morton, Amra Pajalic, Sheila Ngoc Pham, Peter Polites, Alice Pung, and David Sornig.' (Publication summary)

1 2 y separately published work icon Everything in its Right Place Tobias McCorkell , Yarraville : Transit Lounge , 2020 19560489 2020 single work novel

'Coburg, Melbourne. Ford McCullen is growing up with his mother Deidre and his Pop and Noonie in 'The Compound', a pair of units in the shadow of Pentridge prison. His father, Robert, has left them to live in the bush with his new male partner. Nobody is coping.

'When Ford's paternal grandmother Queenie's good fortune allows him to attend a prestigious Catholic private school on the other side of the river and to learn the violin, Ford finds himself balancing separate identities. At school he sees himself being moulded into an image that is not his own, something at odds with the rough and tumble of his beloved north.

'Crumbling under the weight of his family's expectations and realising that he just might be the only adult amongst them, Ford embarks on a quest for meaning while navigating the uncomfortable realities of his father's life, his mother's ongoing crisis, and the pillars of football and religion, delving ever deeper into a fraught search for the source of the 'McCullen curse'. 

'Everything in its Right Place tackles themes of class, love and sexuality with humour, truth and grit. It is a story of the legacies and dilemmas that families bring, of how we all must find our own way, astonishingly told.' (Publication summary)

1 [Review] A Brief Take on the Australian Novel Tobias McCorkell , 2017 single work review
— Appears in: Journal of Postcolonial Writing , vol. 54 no. 1 2017; (p. 129-130)

— Review of A Brief Take on the Australian Novel Jean-François Vernay , 2016 multi chapter work criticism

'A Brief Take on the Australian Novel makes a substantial contribution to Australian literary studies, providing readers with a panoramic view of Australian novels – from colonial literature produced in the convict system (including Australia’s first novel, Henry Savery’s 1831 work Quintus Servinton) through to the postmodernists and the practitioners of contemporary Australian fiction.' (Introduction)

1 y separately published work icon (Re-)Examining Blank Fiction : Sex, Narcissism and Disconnection in Australia and the United States Tobias McCorkell , Melbourne : 1990 12990269 1990 single work thesis

'(Re-)Examining Blank Fiction: Sex, Narcissism and Disconnection in Australia and the United States analyses works of ‘Blank Fiction’ from Australia and the United States within a selection of novels, including: Less Than Zero (1985) by Bret Easton Ellis, Loaded (1995) by Christos Tsiolkas, Rohypnol (2007) by Andrew Hutchinson, The Delivery Man (2008) by Joe McGinniss Jr., and Snake Bite (2014) by Christie Thompson. It examines the use of images drawn from celebrity and lifestyle magazines, music videos, advertising, pornography, television, and Hollywood cinema and argues that these novels co-opt images of mass culture in an effort to critique contemporary social practices, values, and lifestyle. Additionally, this dissertation provides an excerpt of a novel entitled Barely Anything. Barely Anything, like other Blank Fiction novels, details the social practices of a small group of young adults, addressing themes of sex, boredom and privilege on both sides of Melbourne’s Yarra River.'

Source: Abstract.

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