AustLit

'In 2022 the new Labor government cancelled the ERA (Excellence in Research, Australia) round and instructed the ARC to find new ways of accounting for research excellence that are more cost effective than the peer-review model that had served in previous iterations of the ERA. To this end the ARC conducted a consultation process that recommended the ERA be discontinued. What is clear in this emerging new order is the imminence of a move from peer-review processes (which have been abandoned because of the cost burden placed on universities) to data-driven approaches ‘relevant to all disciplines.’ In this light of this it is essential that potential pitfalls with current data-driven systems currently operating in relation to and directly affecting research in the humanities be clearly brought into the light, so that errors that might negatively impact disciplines in the humanities might be avoided. This paper (part of which was sent to the ARC review as part of the AUHE submission), sets out to examine some of the flaws with current systems of accounting for the value of literary studies. The failings occur in two main ways. One of these is to do with the collection and propagation of what might objectively be qualified as ‘bad data’ as a way of representing these disciplines. This is seen in the major journal rankings and citation ranking systems that currently operate in the university sector. The other is to do with the collection and propagation of what might objectively be called ‘bad peer review’ as a way of representing humanities disciplines in international university ranking systems. Some suggestions are made concerning potentially less flawed systems of accounting.' (Publication abstract)

'As the title of Gerald Murnane’s final work makes clear, this book is not one that should be opened by a reader new to his work, one who might be looking for an introduction. Such a reader would be better served by going to any of the earlier works. The reader addressed instead seems to be one who has read Murnane before, as he says, with ‘good will’. To put this more clearly: this is a work that involves Murnane looking back, as a reader, and with his various conceptions of readers who have already engaged with or informed his work, on what has been written, rather than a book that introduces his works to a new reader.'(Introduction)

'Gail Jones is one of Australia’s foremost contemporary novelists. Her books have won or been shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Award, the Miles Franklin Award, the Stella Prize, and numerous state literary awards. They are taught in high schools and universities across the country.

'This collection of essays offers reflections on Jones’ fiction by leading Australian and international literary critics. For readers who loved Sixty Lights, Five Bells, Sorry and Jones’ other novels, and for students of Jones’ work, this book will be an illuminating companion. With chapters on her use of language, her thematic preoccupations, and her place in local and global literary culture, it is a timely guide to the work of an exceptional Australian writer.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'In this major full-career reassessment of J. M. Coetzee, Anthony Uhlmann illuminates the intellectual and philosophical interests that drive Coetzee's writing.

'Whilst looking at Coetzee's writing career, from his dissertation through to The Schooldays of Jesus (2016), and interpreting running themes and scenarios, style, and evolving attitudes to form and genre, Uhlmann also offers revealing glimpses, informed by archival research, of Coetzee's writing process. Among the main themes that Uhlmann draws out from Coetzee's writing, and which remain highly relevant today, are the ideas that there is truth in fiction, or that fiction can provide valuable understandings of real world problems, and there are also fictions of the truth: that we are surrounded, in our everyday lives, with stories we tell ourselves which we wish to believe are true.

'J. M. Coetzee: Truth, Meaning, Fiction offers a revealing new account of one of our most important contemporary writers.' (Introduction)

'As many critics point out, Gerald Murnane challenges how we read, how we think and interpret. The closer one reads him the more profound these challenges appear. I will attempt two things in this chapter. First, I will make some comments on some of these challenges. Second, I will offer a reading of some of the associations of images the work brings together.' (Introduction)

'Gerald Murnane is one of Australia’s most important contemporary authors, but for years was neglected by critics. In 2018 the New York Times described him as “the greatest living English-language writer most people have never heard of” and tipped him as a future Nobel Prize winner.

'Gerald Murnane: Another World in This One coincides with a renewed interest in his work. It includes an important new essay by Murnane himself, alongside chapters by established and emerging literary critics from Australia and internationally. Together they provide a stimulating reassessment of Murnane’s diverse body of work.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'There are many ideas of difficulty and struggle in relation to writing. One that is sometimes forgotten when a writer achieves a level of prominence is the struggle involved in finding a publisher and an audience. With Wayne Macauley some of these difficulties are clearly signalled, with post-it notes helpfully attached to signposts alerting fellow travellers to the challenges faced by writers who write in ways that might be considered atypical or difficult in the industry of Australian publishing in the early twenty-first century.'  (Introduction)

'To investigate the health benefits of participating in creative writing workshops, in 2015 and 2016 a group of academics from Western Sydney University ran an intervention in two retirement homes. Asked to participate in both ‘life writing’ and ‘experimental’ writing exercises rather than purely in life writing alone, participants showed an ability to write in ways they had not done previously, with the two modes of writing practice proving complementary. Two case studies, Skipper and Brydon, show how participants engaged in ‘new writing’ in different ways. A study of the data on the continuing independently run workshops between the two interventions and after the second one reveals that the participants continued to write in ‘new ways’ even after the academic facilitators had ceased being involved.' (Publication abstract)

'I first came to Border Districts through a brief description of it given to me by Gerald Murnane when I first met him three years ago. I thought he had told me that he did not think it was as complex as another work he wrote around the same time, A Million Windows.' (Introduction)

'A defrocked priest, Antony Elm, has made his way into a desert outside Alice Springs, where he intends to stay for forty days and forty nights. He is undergoing a crisis of faith and has brought with him the typescript for a book he has failed to finish about a meeting between Albert Einstein and the French philosopher Henri Bergson. This story concerns a crisis of understanding, as Bergson confronts Einstein about the meaning of time.

'On the back of his typescript Antony writes another story, somehow close to his heart, which concerns two young men traveling to Sydney from Canberra for the first time in the early 1980s. This story, about a crisis of love, takes place in a single night as the boys encounter temptation, damnation and salvation in the world of alternative music.

'Antony becomes increasingly delirious, observing temptations of the flesh and spirit, scribbling in the margins of his two unspooling narratives, awaiting a rescue that may or may not come.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Since the controversy and acclaim that surrounded the publication of Disgrace (1999), the awarding of the Nobel Prize for literature and the publication of Elizabeth Costello: Eight Lessons (both in 2003), J. M. Coetzee's status has begun to steadily rise to the point where he has now outgrown the specialized domain of South African literature. Today he is recognized more simply as one of the most important writers in the English language from the late 20th and early 21st century. Coetzee's productivity and invention has not slowed with old age. The Childhood of Jesus, published in 2013, like Elizabeth Costello, was met with a puzzled reception, as critics struggled to come to terms with its odd setting and structure, its seemingly flat tone, and the strange affectless interactions of its characters. Most puzzling was the central character, David, linked by the title to an idea of Jesus. J.M. Coetzee's The Childhood of Jesus: The Ethics of Ideas and Things is at the forefront of an exciting process of critical engagement with this novel, which has begun to uncover its rich dialogue with philosophy, theology, mathematics, politics, and questions of meaning.' (Publication summary)