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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'Malouf invites us on an intimate, beautifully described journey into his own past, beginning in his childhood home.
'This remarkable book combines autobiography with a subtle, almost painterly sense of the ways in which the objects which we surround ourselves, and the places in which we live, build up our private maps of reality and shape our personal mythologies. David Malouf begins by describing in love, evocative detail, the house in Brisbane where he was born and grew up, moving from room to room, always relating the smallest items in it to the life he remembers and his widening perception of the world at large. He moves on to describe life in the Tuscan village where he lived, and the arrival of an Australian Television crew; reflecting on his first visit to India, he touches on the problems of interpreting and evaluating unfamiliar places; back in Australia, he recalls a traumatic wartime journey with his father from Brisbane to Sydney. Funny, humane and beautifully written, this is a unique and extraordinary essay in autobiography.'
Source: Publisher's blurb (Vintage reprint). (Sighted: 9/5/2014)
Notes
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Dedication: For my sister, Jill.
Contents
- 12 Edmondstone Street, single work prose autobiography (p. 1-66)
- A Place in Tuscany, single work prose (p. 67-102)
- A Foot in the Stream, single work prose travel (p. 103-122)
- al-Khaṭṭ al-ḥadīdī Kāyūjil. The Kyogle Line, single work prose (p. 123-134)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Also braille, sound recording.
Works about this Work
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"The House Will Come to You" : Domestic Architecture in Contemporary Australian Literature and Film
2020
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Antipodes , vol. 34 no. 2 2020; (p. 277-295) 'The house has long been an archetypal site of Gothic terror and entrapment. The Gothic dwelling is one of the most steadfast conventions of the mode, shifting as the Gothic has shifted through history to encompass a range of sites, from castles to cabins, speaking to ongoing anxieties about the security and stability of the home, nation, family, or self. The Gothic’s “relentlessly ‘architectural’ obsessions” (Castle 88) have been well documented, and Gothic buildings are frequently read as psychological as much as physical spaces. The Gothic edifice functions as a “sensation-machine” (Castle 88) capable of generating the sublime feeling of being overwhelmed by a greater power. The Gothic house, operating on a smaller scale, has likewise been associated with overarching power structures such as the nation, family, or—in the Female Gothic—patriarchy.' (Publication abstract) -
The Kyogle Line : 12 Edmondstone Street, Hospitality and Memories of Home
2020
single work
essay
— Appears in: Queensland Review , June vol. 27 no. 1 2020; (p. 60-72)'The spaces of our childhood maintain a particularly enduring hold when they cease to exist or are so reconstructed that the previous version is effectively obliterated. Recollections of an early home that no longer exists provide the framework for David Malouf’s celebrated 12 Edmondstone Street. In this article, I juxtapose Malouf’s experiences with recollections of my own family home in Kyogle, coincidentally situated at the other end of the old railway line that began just a couple of hundred metres from Malouf’s childhood dwelling. In addressing both the similarities and differences between Malouf’s and my own example, the discussion will develop around the fact that in contrast to the physical non-existence of the address of 12 Edmonstone Street, my own family home in Kyogle has not been extinguished; instead, it is today a disfigured ‘renovation’ of its former self. Ultimately, 12 Edmondstone Street – a piece of writing whose poetic power and mnemonic resonance go beyond the mortal limits of physical space – will operate as a literary shelter through which the power of memories of former living spaces can be articulated.' (Publication abstract)
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Scenes of Reading : Australia-Canada-Australia
2015
single work
criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 15 no. 3 2015; 'I found the idea of a ‘scene of writing’ very generative and tried to retrieve a few mises en scène in relation to my own obsessions over the past 45 years of teaching both in Australia and Canada. Reading some of the publications coming out of Robert Dixon’s project (e.g. Dixon and Rooney) I speculated about how fascinating it would be to track Australian scenes of reading in relation to those writers who came to Australian literary texts with knowledge of languages other than English and with cultural contexts other than Anglo-Celtic ones. After the panel session I launched a kind of Festschrift for a writer who has embodied all this for forty years: Antigone Kefala. The book captures many scenes of reading her work in numerous languages and places across the world (Karalis and Nikas). I also started speculating about the recent work by Kim Scott and many others who have been working to salvage Aboriginal languages and that here too there is an important intervention into a prevailing mono-lingualism that still seems to be the default position in Australia. Paradoxically, the work of indigenous writers and critics may make it easier to argue for more attention to be paid to that intra-cosmopolitanism multilingualism comprising the many writers and artists who have always worked within Australia—sometimes in English or an English inflected differently as well as many many other languages (Chow).' (Author's introduction) -
The Mythology of Absence : David Malouf's 12 Edmonstone Street and Stefan Ackerie's Skyneedle
2014
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Folklore , November no. 29 2014; (p. 161-168)'The folkloric power of place cannot be underestimated. This article examines the importance of David Malouf's childhood home in South Brisbane–12 Edmonstone Place–in shaping the imagination of one of Australia's most celebrated writers. It also addresses another very different kind of South Brisbane architectural site, hairdresser Stefan Ackerie's phallic Skyneedle. What will be considered is how Malouf's now long destroyed weatherboard home preserves the sheen of mythology, whereas Ackerie's all too visible Skyneedle short circuits the very possibility of being legendary because of its vertical omnipresence.'
Source: Abstract.
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David Malouf and the Poetics of Possibility
2014
single work
criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 14 no. 2 2014;'The essay addresses the poetic dimension of David Malouf's novels, suggesting that a poetics of possibility can be found in all his work. The poetics of possibility is a function both of Malouf’s thematic interest in the future and of his use of poetic language to draw the reader to imagine various kinds of ways of experiencing and knowing the world. The essay draws upon the philosophy of Ernst Bloch to illuminate the utopian dimension of Malouf’s work, whether in seeing the radiance of possibility in simple objects, the silent ‘presence’ at the centre of language, or the possibility of a different kind of future that Australian society might have experienced.' (Publication abstract)
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Mirrors of Memory
1985
single work
review
— Appears in: The Adelaide Review , December no. 20 1985; (p. 21)
— Review of 12 Edmondstone Street 1985 selected work autobiography essay -
Malouf Revives with Elegance a Neglected Genre
1985
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 16-17 November 1985; (p. 16)
— Review of 12 Edmondstone Street 1985 selected work autobiography essay -
Malouf's Book of Memories
1985
single work
review
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 23 November 1985; (p. B2)
— Review of 12 Edmondstone Street 1985 selected work autobiography essay -
Malouf's Meditative Pause
1985
single work
review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 30 November 1985; (p. 46)
— Review of 12 Edmondstone Street 1985 selected work autobiography essay -
[Review] 12 Edmonstone Street
1985
single work
review
— Appears in: The Age , 7 December 1985; (p. 13)
— Review of 12 Edmondstone Street 1985 selected work autobiography essay -
Writing of Australian Dwelling : Animate Houses and Anxious Ground
2004
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Journal of Australian Studies , no. 80 2004; (p. 43-52, notes 235-236) -
Invisible and Indisivible Boundaries in David Malouf's 12 Edmondstone Street
2006
single work
criticism
— Appears in: The Politics and Poetics of Passage in Canadian and Australian Culture and Fiction 2006; (p. 209-220) -
Teaching Contemporary Australian Autobiography
2007
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Teaching Life Writing Texts 2007; (p. 208-213) -
Somatic Choreographies
2003
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Haunted Nations : The Colonial Dimensions of Multiculturalisms 2003; (p. 93-106) -
'My Father's Knife' : Autobiography as Hermeneutic Phenomenology
2010
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Life Writing , December vol. 7 no. 3 2010; (p. 317-323)
- Brisbane, Queensland,
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Tuscany,
cItaly,cWestern Europe, Europe,
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cIndia,cSouth Asia, South and East Asia, Asia,