Arts & Letters
WORLD
Philosophic Emissions: Roger Scruton’s 'Green Philosophy: How to Think Seriously about the Planet'
Peter Singer
Climate change is a threat to us all but it poses a particular difficulty for those who, like English philosopher Roger Scruton, are on the...
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CULTURE
Citizen Kael: Brian Kellow’s 'Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark'
Christos Tsiolkas
The day after I finished reading Brian Kellow’s Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark (Viking, 432pp; $39.00), I watched John Cassavetes’ Faces...
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WORLD
'The Chemistry of Tears' By Peter Carey
Jennifer Byrne
In the peaty depths of Germany’s Black Forest, nineteenth-century English gentleman Henry Brandling commissions a giant clockwork automaton...
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WORLD
The Politics of News: David McKnight’s 'Rupert Murdoch: An Investigation of Power'
David Marr
Australian journalists have a sad history of going off to Washington to be ruined. They leave home the hope of the side but after a visit...
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CULTURE
No One Comes To See Me Now: Manoly Lascaris and Patrick White’s ghost
Debra Adelaide
Three days a week, in the winter of 1993, I would drive the children to day care and continue to 20 Martin Road, Centennial Park. The house...
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CULTURE
Gumbo: Allen Toussaint and New Orleans
Paul Kelly
My job as a singer–songwriter often involves being interviewed. One of the questions I’m asked most frequently, up there with “What comes...
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Japan
The Bride Wore Black: Akira Isogawa
Peter Robb
Think ‘dress designer’ and what comes to mind? Not a whole lot of fun. Think of the last picture you saw of Karl Lagerfeld or John Galliano...
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CULTURE
'Outland' by Kevin Carlin
Benjamin Law
On paper, the premise of the new ABC1 sitcom Outland seems too self-consciously quirky for its own good. Homosexuals and sci-fi nerds?...
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CULTURE
Fred Schepisi & Vladimir Putin
As Fred Schepisi was whisked along the Rublyovka highway, past luxury car showrooms and Gucci boutiques, he reflected on how much Moscow...
More ...20 Australian Masterpieces Since 2000
The Monthly
FASHION Romance Was Born ‘The Oracle’, 2011 ‘The Oracle’, the fifth major show by two Sydney-based iconoclasts, initially had...
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CULTURE
The Kid Grows Up: Meeting Alex Dimitriades
Peter Robb
Nearing 40, a man’s body begins to die. The body knows this. So does the mind, though it can take a long time before the mind knows what it...
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SOCIETY
'The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia' By Bill Gammage
James Boyce
Modern environmental sensibility has not increased the number of Australians who are able to imagine what our dominant homelands – the...
More ...An Auteur Planet: Pedro Almodóvar’s 'The Skin I Live In' and Lars von Trier’s 'Melancholia'
Peter Conrad
Ah, to be an auteur, with the power to impose your own kinked or crazy worldview on reality! Pleasing only yourself, you can cosmetically...
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CULTURE
'Foal’s Bread' By Gillian Mears
Carmen Callil
Gillian Mears’s new novel tells the story of the Nancarrow family of One Tree Farm, subsistence farmers in rural New South Wales. Its...
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CULTURE
Treasure in the Attic: The golden age of singer–songwriters
Robert Forster
As far as romantic professions go, it’s up there with lighthouse-keeping, lion-taming or jobbing as a private detective in Los Angeles in...
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POLITICS
New Labor Dreaming: Troy Bramston’s 'Looking for the Light on the Hill'
Maxine McKew
Coming from New South Wales, a state that has made an artform of decapitating leaders, Bramston doesn’t always follow the logic of his own...
More ...The Other Biography: Jacqueline Kent's "The Making of Julia Gillard"
Christine Wallace
If attention from biographers augurs well for a politician’s career, then Julia Gillard looks good for the Lodge when Kevin Rudd’s day is...
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WORLD
When the Centre Cannot Hold: Joan Didion’s 'Blue Nights'
Inga Clendinnen
Along with many others, I was first drawn to Joan Didion when I read her 1967 essay ‘Slouching towards Bethlehem’. It presented a...
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WORLD
'Caleb’s Crossing' By Geraldine Brooks
Kirsten Tranter
Caleb’s Crossing extends Geraldine Brooks’s interest in the early history of the United States, first explored in her Pulitzer Prize–...
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SOCIETY
High Priest: David Walsh and Tasmania’s Museum of Old and New Art
Amanda Lohrey
The Moorilla estate is set on a peninsula of sandstone cliffs that juts out into the Derwent estuary on Hobart’s northern fringe. Framed to...
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The Shortlist Daily
7 February 2012
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