Emmett Stinson

Ha! Love it.

Looks like Paul Strand!

I wasn't sure about this at first but I'm now 2/3rds through and enjoying it very much. I wish the writing was more stylish but could a novel even win the Miles Franklin if it weren't a little clunky in places?

It’s perfectly good in its way! I like a fair bit of it. I certainly wouldn’t say Carey is a bad novelist (he isn’t), though I do kind of think he sold out but also was, like, really really good at it.

The stories are great. The novels are good within the subgenre of the 80s/90s booker-winning novel. His talent is unquestionable.

Those early stories are simply incredible and have been possibly more influential than any of the novels (which are mostly good). Glad to hear he was enjoyable in person—what a fantastic experience.

This is interesting to me because in the article he pokes fun at his younger more avant-garde self who, he imagines, would criticise the writer he became. But his younger self was the better writer!

Peter Carey says he’s done writing novels: ‘You have to know when it’s enough’ The Australian literary giant has confirmed there won’t be another novel from him.

Carey is one of Australia’s greatest short story writers just from his two early collections. He could have been one of our best writers. Instead, he became an internationally successful novelist. Hard to fault him for it, but still a loss for literature. www.theage.com.au/culture/book...

I remember being tired but not hungover!

Yeah, that’s the bit that sounds familiar to me, too. I have come to accept that I experience most major life events in probably unhealthy dissociative states: looks like this was another one!

I honesty can’t remember the graduation speech at all but that sounds right?

Rare books? : the divided field of reading and book culture in contemporary Australia

There’s this: researchers.westernsydney.edu.au/en/publicati...

Helen Garner at the launch of HEAT in Perth

I think there are plenty in genre fiction still, but fewer in lit fic if the yardstick is Mailer/Roth or even, like, Martin Amis. In Australia, Trent Dalton, Tim Winton, Robbie Arnott, Flanagan, Murnane are all well-known authors who write ‘masculine’ books, I think?

Selected British Literary Prizes (1990-2022) – Post45 Data Collective The Selected British Literary Prizes (SBLP) dataset contains information on nine major literary prizes in the U.K. from 1990 to 2022 and demographic information on 682 prize winners and shortlisted au...

Brilliant dataset on literary prizes - and a way to track trends and changes over time - from Katherine Binhammer and colleagues : data.post45.org/posts/britis...

Digital humanities are go.

“…while Solzhenitsyn suffered in the gulag, Amerena’s characters suffer in an environment even more soul-destroying: Melbourne literary dinner parties.”
Golden.

Australia’s Literary Impostor Syndrome In the absence of a thriving avant-garde, I Want Everything conjures an alternate history.

I reviewed Dominic Amerena's I Want Everything for Kill Your Darlings. www.killyourdarlings.com.au/article/aust...

Just finished doing some public policy analysis for a UK group. The UK has a lot of lessons to teach Australia - stay the absolute fuck away from every policy prescription the UK undertook on every area of public policy over the last two generations. And completely ignore their campaign brainworms.

can't argue with this!

An Unfinished Rose, by Troth 9 track album

gorgeous stuff out of Tasmania troth.bandcamp.com/album/an-unf...

CINDY LEE DIAMOND JUBILEE Cindy Lee Diamond Jubilee Download WAVs Audio Player

Oh--my favourite album of the last year! You'd love it and the artist has made it available as a free download: castexotic.com/realistikstu...

Ha--yes I have an older very solid Yamaha deck and with decent quality tapes it sounds very good.

It's significantly worse now than it was in the late 80s (no noise reduction on tapes, lower quality tape, only one inferior tape mechanism still available for modern players). Still love it but mostly listen to homemade dupes which I can at least ensure sound good.

Tbh that probably has better sound

The “epic handshake” meme template, the text over the left arms says “sonic the hedgehog, the text over the right arm says “philip k dick”, the text over the clasped hands says “fixing all your problems with more speed”