December 2009 - January 2010
SOCIETY
Coming Of Age: Robin Boyd’s ‘The Australian Ugliness’ Fifty Years On
Peter Conrad
In 1960, when Robin Boyd published his attack on the stylistic cowardice of our suburbs, it took courage to call Australia ugly. The...
More ...SOCIETY
Bright Stars: John Keats and Fanny Brawne Revisited
Sophie Gee
John Keats’s last letter is just about his most powerful piece of writing. He was in Rome, dying of tuberculosis. He’d gone there in a...
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SOCIETY
Margaret Court and Martina Navratilova
When Margaret Court walked into the locker room at the close of the 1973 French Open, Martina Navratilova tried not to gawk. Court was a...
More ...CULTURE
‘So This Is Life: Tales from a Country Childhood’ by Anne Manne
Amanda Lohrey
Accounts of adult lives often lapse into flat chronicle mode. They can be partial in their truths – when not downright evasive – and...
More ...Poetry
‘The Anthologist’ by Nicholson Baker
Michelle de Kretser
“Hello, this is Paul Chowder, and I’m going to tell you everything I know.” That’s a good opening sentence: it’s colloquial and grabby, in...
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Broken Record: The ‘Guinness World Records’
Malcolm Knox
High noon. A red dust storm has swallowed Sydney, and Brittany Boffo and Dean Frenkel are sitting in a green room readying themselves to...
More ...Poetry
Daytime Nightmares: Herta Müller’s ‘The Land of Green Plums’ and ‘The Passport’
Robert Dessaix
We all know the paintings: the floating brides, the fiddlers and farmyard animals. Colours from a palette only glimpsed in dreams. Marc...
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Cold Turkey: Jonathan Safran Foer’s ‘Eating Animals’
Peter Singer
Jonathan Safran Foer is a talented novelist with a gift for writing amusingly about serious issues. In Everything Is Illuminated (2003), he...
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Nowhere Near Hollywood: Australian Film
Louis Nowra
I set out to watch most of the Australian films released this year because I wanted to grasp the condition of our industry. On a practical...
More ...CULTURE
From Mop Tops To Moustaches: The Beatles Remastered
Robert Forster
The Beatles were formed in 1957 when John Lennon invited Paul McCartney to join The Quarrymen. Soon after, McCartney got his mate George...
More ...POLITICS
Failed State: New South Wales
John Birmingham
You cannot blame them, because Perry’s restaurant, located in a grand old insurance building, does soar. To stand in the entry foyer is to...
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CULTURE
A Wild Colonial Boy
John van Tiggelen
Ben Laycock buried his father on Melbourne Cup Day. The 300-odd mourners, a rather arty lot, were assured Peter Laycock wouldn’t have...
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SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
A Fava Fresca!
Gay Bilson
Early in October the broad beans began to appear, but were still so small that it was mere ritual to nip one or two off and eat them whole...
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ECONOMICS
Pigs Might Fly
Amanda Lohrey
On a recent trip to Sydney I was urged by friends to visit a new butcher shop in the wealthy suburb of Woollahra. At first I was resistant...
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SOCIETY
Dead, Wrapped in Cardboard
Benjamin Law
People might flock to the Gold Coast to feel alive, but it is increasingly also a destination for the dead. Drive inland, away from the...
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SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
Tried Again
Alan Saunders
Well, at least nobody had to wear tights. We were all clad in a seemly manner – academic robes for most of us – when we stepped onto the...
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WORLD
Comment: Rudd’s China Policy
Hugh White
The big story of 2009 has been the economic downturn, better known as the Global Financial Crisis, and the biggest part of that story has...
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SOCIETY
Comment: Anglican Business
David Marr
Sydney’s brand new archbishop wanted money – lots and lots of money – to persuade 400,000 souls in the nation’s most sinful city “to serve...
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WORLD
December 2009 - January 2010 in brief
THE MONTHLY ESSAYS“Never before have I found myself so immersed in an art form that made me question just what it is to be Australian,...
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Neon Statements: Joseph Kosuth and Conceptual Art
Justin Clemens
At the beginning of the 1960s, the New York art scene was going wild. World War II had created the conditions for the city to become the...
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The Shortlist Daily
9 February 2012
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