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'The new selection of essays from one of Australia's finest historians and writers.Agamemnon's Kiss is a thrilling selection of essays by one of Australia's most celebrated writers. Inga Clendinnen writes about everything from the books that terrified her as a child to what history can teach us about ourselves and our own times. She describes visits to the beach and to a museum dedicated to the Holocaust. She recounts the experience of falling ill and the prospect of death. And she writes movingly about other people who have changed her own life. Many of the themes which are central to Clendinnen's work are teased out in Agamemnon's Kiss: the question of black/white relations in Australia, the way we think about the Holocaust and its perpetrators, and the investigative power of history. Clendinnen is not just a brilliant thinker. She writes brilliant sentences too, and in these essays her full mastery of language is everywhere evident.' (Publication summary)
Notes
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Dedication: In memory of my unknown donor, April 1994, and of Helen Daniel 1946-2000.
Contents
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Introduction : Agamemnon's Kiss : Selected Essays,
single work
essay
Clendinnen reflects on the nature of the essay and the factors that distinguish essays from letters, diaries and the confessional.
- Big Louis, single work essay (p. 11-17)
- Backstage at the Republic of Letters, single work essay (p. 18-30)
- The Gecko in the Machine, single work essay humour (p. 31-37)
-
At the Beach
Waves of Nostalgia,
single work
autobiography
(p. 38-44)
Note: With title: At the Beach
-
Breaking the Mirror from the Aztec Feast of the Flaying of Men to Organ Transplantation,
single work
essay
(p. 44-58)
Note: With title: Breaking the Mirror
- Hobyahs!, single work essay (p. 59-63)
- About Bones, single work prose biography (p. 64-84)
- Postcard from Townsville, single work essay (p. 87-99)
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Fellow Sufferers: History and Imagination,
single work
essay
(p. 100-109)
Note: With title: Fellow Sufferers
- Norman Mailer Meets Jack Ruby, single work criticism (p. 110-116)
-
Bernard Schlink's The Reader,
single work
essay
Review essay on Bernard Schlink's The Reader.
-
Plenty Humbug,
single work
essay
Inga Clendinnen reflects on the role of the public intellectual in the context of external perceptions of Aboriginal culture.
-
Dispatches from the History Wars,
single work
essay
Inga Clendinnen comments on Stuart Macintyre's The History Wars (2003) and the debate about Australian history among historians and commentators such as Keith Windshuttle, Henry Reynolds and Robert Manne.
- Building Treblinka, single work essay (p. 158-176)
- Secret Meetings, Secret Lives, single work essay (p. 179-187)
- The Crack in the Teacup: Reading Hilary Mantel, single work essay (p. 188-204)
- Penelope Fitzgerald 1916-2000, single work essay (p. 205-211)
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Anne Frank Biographers Find The Devil In The Detail,
single work
essay
A review essay on biographies of Anne Frank.Note:
- With title: Anne Frank.
- Slightly revised version.
- Agamemnon's Kiss, single work essay (p. 216-228)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
-
The Past Is Not Sacred : A Dangerous Obsession with Anzac
2015
single work
essay
— Appears in: Griffith Review , April no. 48 2015; (p. 13-24)'THE TERM ‘HISTORY wars’ is best known in Australia for summing up the fierce debate over the nature and extent of frontier conflict, with profound implications for the legitimacy of the British settlement and thus for national legitimacy today.
'That debate, though hardly resolved, is now taking something of a back seat to a public controversy focused on Australia’s wars of the twentieth century and particularly on the war of 1914–18, called the Great War until the Second World War redefined it as the First.' (Introduction)
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Autobiographical Performance Within the Academy
2012
single work
criticism
— Appears in: LINQ , December no. 39 2012; (p. 62-72)'The difficulty of writing as an autobiographer and simultaneously as a literary critic is that one trips the other up. My autobiographical self says I must write. I must follow the images in my mind. I must try to recreate my past, as bet I can, and fill in the gaps from my imagination. My unconscious will lead the way.' (Author's introduction)
-
Counter-Poetics
2011
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , June vol. 26 no. 2 2011; (p. 91-108) 'Michel Foucault defined history as 'the discourse of power' (Society 68), arguing that the function of a 'counter-history' is 'to show that laws deceive, that kings wear masks, that power creates illusions, and the historians tell lies' (Bainbridge 58). Writing on the relationship of poetry to power, critic Simon Bainbridge argues, citing Byron's Don Juan, that in 'the face of a model of "History" which can only take "things in the gross", Foucault offers a counter history which enables us to "know them in detail"' (50). By disciplinary analogy, I will argue that the poetry of Indigenous Australian Tony Birch can best be read not only as a counter-history, but as a 'counter-poetics'. However, I will also ask whether this notion of poetic 'countering' is inherently oxymoronic, given that poetry is highly performative, writerly and readerly; at its best always a self-questioning and critical art.' (Author's introduction p. 91)
-
When 'History Changes Who We Were'
2008
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , vol. 23 no. 4 2008; (p. 481-488)
— Review of Searching for the Secret River 2006 single work criticism ; The History Question : Who Owns the Past? 2006 single work essay ; Agamemnon's Kiss : Selected Essays 2006 selected work essay ; Is History Fiction? 2005 single work criticism -
Nonfiction
2007
single work
review
— Appears in: Island , Summer no. 111 2007; (p. 71-74)
— Review of Agamemnon's Kiss : Selected Essays 2006 selected work essay
-
The Whole is Worthy of Its Parts
2006
single work
review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 26-27 August 2006; (p. 32-33)
— Review of Agamemnon's Kiss : Selected Essays 2006 selected work essay -
Lucid Essays that Illuminate
2006
single work
review
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 23 September 2006; (p. 12)
— Review of Agamemnon's Kiss : Selected Essays 2006 selected work essay -
Writing and its Role in Her History
2006
single work
review
— Appears in: The Age , 23 September 2006; (p. 27)
— Review of Agamemnon's Kiss : Selected Essays 2006 selected work essay -
In the Eyes of a Steady Looker
2006
single work
review
— Appears in: The Australian Literary Review , October vol. 1 no. 2 2006; (p. 18)
— Review of Agamemnon's Kiss : Selected Essays 2006 selected work essay -
'Wylde for to Hold, though I Seme Tame'
2006
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , November no. 286 2006; (p. 11-12)
— Review of Agamemnon's Kiss : Selected Essays 2006 selected work essay -
Counter-Poetics
2011
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , June vol. 26 no. 2 2011; (p. 91-108) 'Michel Foucault defined history as 'the discourse of power' (Society 68), arguing that the function of a 'counter-history' is 'to show that laws deceive, that kings wear masks, that power creates illusions, and the historians tell lies' (Bainbridge 58). Writing on the relationship of poetry to power, critic Simon Bainbridge argues, citing Byron's Don Juan, that in 'the face of a model of "History" which can only take "things in the gross", Foucault offers a counter history which enables us to "know them in detail"' (50). By disciplinary analogy, I will argue that the poetry of Indigenous Australian Tony Birch can best be read not only as a counter-history, but as a 'counter-poetics'. However, I will also ask whether this notion of poetic 'countering' is inherently oxymoronic, given that poetry is highly performative, writerly and readerly; at its best always a self-questioning and critical art.' (Author's introduction p. 91)
-
Autobiographical Performance Within the Academy
2012
single work
criticism
— Appears in: LINQ , December no. 39 2012; (p. 62-72)'The difficulty of writing as an autobiographer and simultaneously as a literary critic is that one trips the other up. My autobiographical self says I must write. I must follow the images in my mind. I must try to recreate my past, as bet I can, and fill in the gaps from my imagination. My unconscious will lead the way.' (Author's introduction)
-
The Past Is Not Sacred : A Dangerous Obsession with Anzac
2015
single work
essay
— Appears in: Griffith Review , April no. 48 2015; (p. 13-24)'THE TERM ‘HISTORY wars’ is best known in Australia for summing up the fierce debate over the nature and extent of frontier conflict, with profound implications for the legitimacy of the British settlement and thus for national legitimacy today.
'That debate, though hardly resolved, is now taking something of a back seat to a public controversy focused on Australia’s wars of the twentieth century and particularly on the war of 1914–18, called the Great War until the Second World War redefined it as the First.' (Introduction)