Riding High - Gillian Mears returns to the novel
Foal’s Bread is not just a triumphant return to the novel by Gillian Mears, it also supports a literary resurgence of serious, writerly Australian Gothic. There are shades of Flannery O’Connor overlaid with Jolley and early Winton in this book. It also follows on from where Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria and Matthew Condon’s Trout Opera have led Australian readers in recent years. It has been disappointing to see several reviews expending quite a lot of space summarising the plot of this solid, entrancing book. For my part, I am sorry that I am not more conversant with Mears’ extensive output of short fiction. Since her last novel sixteen years ago, Mears has three short story collections under her belt, along with some outstanding essays about illness and mortality. Her work has earned, and deserves, sustained attention.
7/22 - Only the truth is revolutionary
Almost invariably, Breivik is described as a rightwing extremist in the mainstream press, while the Wikipedia entry for the Norway attacks describes them as ‘two sequential terrorist attacks against the government, the civilian population and a summer camp in Norway on 22 July 2011’. For the contributors to 'On Utøya', however, these observations are so explosive that there has been a systematic campaign to cover them up.
Buried Alive - Pria Viswalingam’s pessimistic fatalism
"The goal of every culture is to decay through over-civilization; the factors of decadence—luxury, scepticism, weariness and superstition—are constant. The civilization of one epoch becomes the manure of the next." (Cyril Connolly) So begins Pria Viswalingam’s new documentary, 'Decadence,' a meditation on the corruption of the West’s fundamental values of freedom and individualism.
Onward and Upward - Steven Pinker Spreads Good News
The thesis of 'The Better Angels of our Nature' must have sounded like a ridiculous proposition to the publishers: ‘The world is getting less violent over time. In the last few centuries, violence has undergone a massive decline – and there’s no reason to think it won’t decline further’. But we all know that there’s more horrible stuff going on all over the globe than ever before, right?
