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Memoir

Christopher Hitchens’ 'Hitch-22'

Swinger

By Dennis Altman
At one point in Hitch-22: A Memoir (Atlantic Books, 352pp; $35.00) Christopher Hitchens writes: “As 1968 began to ebb into 1969 … people began to intone the words: ‘The personal is political’. At the instant I heard this deadly expression I knew … that it was – cliché is arguably forgivable here – very bad news.” But what is the point of writing memoirs if the personal is irr
Germaine Greer and 'The Female Eunuch'

The Better Self?

By Louis Nowra
It’s 40 years since Greer published her first book, The Female Eunuch, and became famous. I first read the book when it came out in paperback. By that stage, I had already read Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique. I was brought up in a world of women and as a boy my playmates were mostly girls. I always felt frustrated that nearly all the girls I knew, including my many female relatives

A Fava Fresca!

By 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. The pods, about 6 centimetres long, are at first difficult to see. They rise close to the hollow, square-ribbed stem which is at least 1 metre in height before the pretty flowers – white with a black spot on each petal – begin to give way to the beans themselves. Spotting the first bean is alway
Black Inc., 224 pp; $27.95

"Piano Lessons" by Anna Goldsworthy

By Zora Simic
At first glance, Anna Goldsworthy’s memoir, Piano Lessons, appears rather modest: she revisits her childhood and adolescence in comfortably suburban Adelaide, with the passing years marked by her development as a classical pianist under the tutelage of her piano teacher, Mrs Eleanora Sivan, a Russian émigré and one of a formidable line of teachers dating
Edmund Capon's "I Blame Duchamp"

C'est la vie

By Sebastian Smee
No one ever seems surprised by Edmund Capon’s success, for he is charm incarnate. He has led one of Australia’s most visited art galleries, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, since 1978. You watch the way he floats, like pollen, from engagement to engagem
J.M. Coetzee's 'Summertime'

A Federer Game

By Inga Clendinnen
JM Coetzee wrote Boyhood, his account from inside the mind (distanced third person, urgent present tense) of an unnamed South African boy heading into puberty when he was in his fifties. Surely he was young to be writing memoirs? Surely another novel would hav

The Death of the Good Father

By Drusilla Modjeska
In Granta’s anthology called Fathers, published at the end of last year there’s a tough little story from New Zealand’s Kirsty Gunn. It’s called ‘The Father’. Actually, it’s about a grandfather who turns up when the children are on holiday. Fathers aren’
Robert Connolly's 'Balibo'

Cover Story

By Luke Davies
In the book Dispatches, Michael Herr’s virtuoso memoir of the Vietnam War, Sean Flynn – Errol’s son – an actor and photojournalist who went missing in action in Cambodia in 1970, is portrayed as a kind of philosopher-adventurer, bounding like a fearles

A Proper Wedding

By Amanda Lohrey
I could not remember another time when a newsreader had been elevated above bishops at an important state memorial service, yet no one in the media remarked on it. This, I believe, is a direct outcome of the fact that for over three decades Australians have been attendi
Judith Wright & Nugget Coombs

In the Garden

By Fiona Capp
When Coombs died he was farewelled with a state funeral. He had been an enormously influential figure in Australian political and cultural life since the 1940s, first as Director-General of Post-War Reconstruction and later as Governor of the Reserve Bank, adv
"The Accidental Guerrilla" by David Kilcullen

Turning a Mouse into an Elephant

By Hugh White
Soldiers who are also scholars have always had a certain cachet, but since 1914, when major warfare became unrelentingly industrial, soldier-scholars have flourished best at the margins, in the small wars of imperial decline. It was only in these wars that bru
Haydn in the Outback

Into the Red

By Nicolas Rothwell
“I suppose you think this is beautiful,” said Johnson, in a challenging voice.“Well,” I said, “it does have a certain primal quality.”We had not been getting on for the past 300 kilometres, and this was mostly because of the music issue. Photographers, and t
Damien Wright & His Table

The Pursuit of Usable Beauty

By Gideon Haigh
By Don Walker

Shots

By Tim Rogers
Two years back I spent time with Don Walker in the manner to which we're both accustomed: meet in a lobby, jump in a van, drive to a show, play, drive back, avoid morning duties with shaky resolve. I was intimidated, not merely by his prowess as a songwriter but by his steady gaze. Come 4 am we were talking of Iran and Farsi, tales of exploration as intoxicating as almost everything in Shots, a me
Philip Roth’s 'Indignation'

Arise!

By Drusilla Modjeska
When, in 1951, Philip Roth affixed decals to the rear of his father's Chevy - "one proclaiming the name of my new university, the other the Greek initials of my fraternity" - his uncle, a drycleaner, took to calling him ‘Joe College'. It was a name that stuc
Laurent Cantet’s 'The Class'

Life Inside

By Luke Davies
In the staff room at the beginning of a school year, François (François Bégaudeau), a French teacher at a Parisian middle school, chats with the new history teacher, who is outlining with matter-of-fact certainty his term plan for Year 9. The teacher's idea

Peter Craven's Best Books for Summer 2008-09

By Peter Craven

A Stockingful

By Peter Craven