AustLit
Latest Issues
Notes
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Contents indexed selectively.
Contents
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Read What You Know : The Comfort of the Familiar,
single work
essay
'At the start of each new year, I look back on all the books that I have read the year before. In 2013, it was a list that spanned a lifetime of reading, with books from all the decades of my life. More than ever, it was also a list full of books that I found myself returning to for a second (or third, or fourth) time. ' (Publication abstract)
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The Political Tourist in Myanmar : Totalitarian Nostaglia and How to Get Travel All Wrong,
single work
prose
'I arrived in Burma calling the country by its old name and left calling it by its official name, Myanmar. In seventeen days I was convinced that the name given to the country by a military dictatorship was indeed the correct one. Perhaps I'd inhaled propaganda like second-hand smoke in my conversations with 'Myanmar people', as they call themselves. They told me over and over again that the name better represented all the minority nationalities in the country. Burma, they said, was only for the Burmese - the dominant ethnic group. Critics of the government have argued that the name change to Myanmar was something of a 'unite and conquer strategy' by the military, and it did seem something of a flawed logic that Burmese (the language) is also now referred to as 'Myanmar language'.' (Publication abstract)
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All the Love Gone Bad : On Men and Music Lost,
single work
prose
'So indelibly tied to music are my relationship failures that each time I've lost a beloved, a dear song or record has been sacrificed too. It hit me as I crawled into bed late one night with The National, expecting Matt Berninger's melancholic baritone to lull me quickly off to sleep. Six hours later as dawn broke I was more awake than ever, each loop of the album plunging me deeper into regret about a relationship I'd ended - and thought I'd dealt with - almost two years earlier.' (Publication abstract)
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The Lake,
single work
short story
' It's then that I lose heart. My mind trickles to a stop at the bottom of a hill. While staring at nothing at all on the ground with downcast half-eyes, I sneak glimpses of the small aeroplane turning on its heel and strolling across the field, drawing momentum up through blades of shaved grass. Tiny faces in the windows, dirty white paint. Dad is still at my side speaking steadily, hopefully, insistently. The six-seater clenches and climbs...' (Publication abstract)
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Out in the Wild,
single work
short story
'What I'd heard was that the casino's owner had held this great big dream of making the place themed to space travel, but it really only went as far as the solar system print on the carpet and the empty astronaut suit that greeted you at the entrance, gloved hand raised up like it was going to give you a high five. Then there were pot plants sitting around, the smell of blow-dryered hair, the feeling of sand under your shoes when you walked on the tile...' (Publication abstract)