November 2011
CULTURE
Age of Innocence: Frank Moorhouse’s 'Cold Light'
David Marr
Edith Campbell Berry has crashed to earth in Canberra circa 1950. She is no longer wanted abroad. All her years at the League of Nations...
More ...The Book of Paul: Lessons in Leadership and Paul Keating
George Megalogenis
Comparisons between leaders can be unfair to the incumbent because the one with the job has yet to receive the clemency of political...
More ...A Journey through North-western NSW with Filmmaker Ivan Sen
Peter Robb
Ivan Sen was heading for the place that gives its name to his new film Toomelah, the place where he made the film. We drove through...
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ENVIRONMENT
What We Learned in Copenhagen
Andrew Charlton
At 10.45 p.m. my phone rang. “The Danes are switching to the back-up plan,” a voice said. “Room 20. 11.30 tonight.” I pulled on my suit...
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CULTURE
Morris West & Ngo Dinh Diem
It was 1963 and Morris West, Australia’s most successful novelist, was researching his next book. Dismissed by the literati as a middlebrow...
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CULTURE
'1Q84' Books 1, 2 and 3 By Haruki Murakami
Lian Hearn
Leos Janacek’s Sinfonietta and Anton Chekhov’s Sakhalin Island both became bestsellers last year in Japan after featuring in Haruki...
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CULTURE
'What the Family Needed' By Steven Amsterdam
Cate Kennedy
Steven Amsterdam’s award-winning 2009 debut, Things We Didn’t See Coming, heralded the arrival of a richly comic, original and utterly...
More ...Spin It: 30 Albums
Robert Forster
Some years ago I was in the cluttered study of a friend who works as a music journalist and radio broadcaster in Munich. The walls were...
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CULTURE
Right Composition: Meeting Composer Carl Vine
Anna Goldsworthy
Many years ago in Sydney, moments before I was due on stage, the stage manager breezily mentioned that the composer might be in the...
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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...
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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
A Quiet Anniversary: AIDS 30 Years on
Gail Bell
The taming of HIV/AIDS is Australia’s good news story. Our swift, egalitarian response – the so-called ‘Australian model’ – made us unique...
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SOCIETY
Caught in the Game: The Rise of the Sports Betting Industry
Jonathan Horn
Like his brother, Reverend Tim Costello is an Essendon supporter. He was watching the game on television and it left a sour taste. “There’s...
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POLITICS
Window Dressing: The Mirage of Political Reform
Lindsay Tanner
Such sentiments are understandable but misguided. The rules that govern how our political system works matter, but the development of...
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CULTURE
A Small Breed: The Portuguese Podengo
Sonya Hartnett
Among the canine entrants on the third day of competition at this year’s Royal Melbourne Show – the ethereal salukis and monolithic St...
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CULTURE
London Calling: The Ledbury
MJ Hyland
On 8 August, during the London riots, Brett Graham’s restaurant, The Ledbury, was invaded by looters. “There were 30 of them and they...
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SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
It Tolls for Thee: Generation Text
Guy Pearse
Ping! New message received. “Hi, this is Dr Carl O’Kane from the Townsville Hospital emergency department. I was taking your medical...
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POLITICS
Comment: Palin Politics and the Tea Party
Don Watson
The fact of the automobile for instance; and Big Oil, which fuelled it; and the strip malls, which made the car indispensable to commerce,...
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