| The Monthly

The paradox of art and creative writing

Lies that Tell the Truth

By Simon Leys

All Bogans Here

By Anna Funder

In a recent Chaser sketch, Julian Morrow dressed up as a "citizens' infringement officer" in a yellow fluoro jacket. He walked the streets of inner Sydney conducting a baby-name audit. Where appropriate, he handed out fines."Sebastian," a Balmain mother said proudly, holding on to the pram."Bit pretentious, don't you think?" Morrow said. "That'll be 70 bucks."In Glebe he found a baby with his

Wendi Deng Murdoch

By Eric Ellis

Deng Wen Ge - she changed her name to Wendi in her mid-teens - was born in Shandong around the time that her future husband was buying London's News of the World. One of three children, she grew up in neighbouring Xuzhou as a Subei ren - a vernacular term for the robust, rosy-cheeked folk of northern Jiangsu province, who are known, if not always loved, throughout China for being blunt, blithe and somewhat uncouth. Today is ‘Learn Fro

How the end of the world came to Melbourne

Shute the Messenger

By Gideon Haigh

Early on 22 July 1957, a false alarm of nuclear attack sounded in Schenectady, New York. Only one man, reported Harper's, roused and evacuated his family. Everyone else, including civil-defence officials, emulated the mayor, who "rolled over and went back to sleep".Into this eerily somnolent world was On the Beach released. Debate was underway in the US abou

Editor's Note

By Sally Warhaft

‘Is that the truth, or is your News Limited?' Last month, while this magazine celebrated its second birthday, Australia's pre-eminent media group, Fairfax, spiked a story profiling Wendi Deng Murdoch that one of its editors had commissioned. We don't yet kn

Understanding Raimond Gaita

From Frogmore, Victoria

By Helen Garner

There's a brief scene, quite early in the movie, in which Raimond is mooching along a street and sees a teenage girl dancing wildly to a record on her front porch. He calls out and asks her the name of the singer. She tells him it's Jerry Lee Lewis, from Ferri

The Real World

By Charles Firth

A few years ago, I was asked to speak at the Screen Producers Association Fringe Conference, in Byron Bay. I can't remember what my area of expertise was, but I do remember one television executive who specialised in getting shows ‘to market'. She explained that in th

Not in Translation

By Malcolm Knox

When Gough Whitlam told the young Kevin Rudd to go out and get a university degree, Rudd chose to study Chinese language and history at the ANU. What if a present-day mentor showed equal prescience and advised an ambitious protégé to go out and learn the lan

Kuru Awareness Week

By Richard Cooke

The US Vice President, Dick Cheney, took an unwelcome guest home with him from his recent Australian trip. Never a healthy man (he has had four heart attacks and a quadruple bypass), the VP complained of calf pain on his return and, sure enough, an ultrasound revealed a

The Strange History of Manning Clark

Being There

By Mark McKenna

Jonestown

By David Marr

"I think that is so outrageous," brayed Andrew Bolt. We were sitting in the armchairs of the ABC's Insiders, cameras rolling, the morning after chunks of Chris Masters' Jonestown began appearing in the press. Bolt's voice was steady and angry. "I've read the e

An interview with Robert Hughes

Time’s Arrow

By Peter Craven

Hughes had become the art critic of Time magazine in 1970, and you could read those page-long pieces - which as severe a judge as Gerald Murnane once described as being written in flawless prose - 30 or so times a year. There were also, over the decades, those TV survey

A Commission’s Report Confirms Australian Duplicity & Cowardice

Truth, Death & Diplomacy in East Timor

By Mark Aarons

'A Current Affair' on Channel Nine / 'Today Tonight' on Channel Seven

By Kerryn Goldsworthy

Among people who get their current affairs from the ABC or SBS, the consensus is that A Current Affair and Today Tonight rate their socks off by relying on stories about neighbourhood feuds, sex scandals, dodgy salesmen, weight loss, welfare cheats and bras. It’s true: people watch these shows because their taxes, their sex lives, their cars, their weight, their neighbours and their own or other