October 10, 2019
Afterwards, nothing is the same: Shirley Hazzard
Culture
On the splendour of the acclaimed author’s distinctly antipodean seeing
Michelle de Kretser
By this author
June 1, 2012
‘The Watch Tower’ by Elizabeth Harrower
arts
Elizabeth Harrower’s fiction obsessively circles the workings of power within the domestic sphere. Watchfulness, cruelty and the suffering of the innocent feed her work, as her titles hint: The Long Prospect, The Catherine Wheel. Harrower’s …
July 5, 2012
Out of Auckland
Literature
Emily Perkins’ 'The Forrests'
April 4, 2012
’The Hanging Garden’ by Patrick White
Patrick White
The publication of an unfinished draft is the writer’s version of that nightmare in which you find yourself naked in the street. Writers donate manuscripts to libraries, of course, but there is usually a finished work to offset those drafts. Also, the …
March 2, 2012
’Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend of the World’s Most Famous Dog’ by Susan Orlean
Hollywood
In World War I, trained ‘mercy dogs’ roamed among the wounded on the battlefields of France. A soldier could call one over and hold it for comfort while he died. It’s one of the affecting factoids that stray through Rin Tin Tin, New …
June 2, 2011
‘Iphigenia in Forest Hills: Anatomy of a Murder Trial’ By Janet Malcolm
Culture
Courtrooms, like theatres, draw on claustrophobia to compel. The closed-door atmosphere, sealed off from the quotidian, lends contrived outcomes the inevitability of fate. If Iphigenia in Forest Hills offered no more than courtroom drama, Janet …
March 31, 2011
‘Claude Lévi-Strauss: The Poet in the Laboratory’ by Patrick Wilcken
Culture
In 1938 an obscure French anthropologist, sporting a topee and with a monkey clinging to his boot, led an expedition into deepest Brazil. Part scientific enterprise, part youthful lighting out for the territory, its fieldwork was patchy, impressionistic …
November 4, 2010
‘The Man Who Loved Children’ by Christina Stead
Society
It is one of the great ironies of our literature that Christina Stead’s The Man Who Loved Children, a novel steeped in autobiography, should be set in Washington rather than Sydney. The change was imposed by its American publishers, who believed …
October 1, 2010
‘The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis’
Culture
In the United States, Lydia Davis has long been acclaimed for her experiments in short fiction. Elsewhere, she is best known as a translator of French literature and philosophy; in particular, for the 2002 translation of Marcel Proust’s In Search …
September 3, 2010
‘Freedom’ by Jonathan Franzen
Culture
Artists in fiction are coded confessions. Freedom gives us Richard Katz, rock musician and homme fatal, pitched suddenly, just like Jonathan Franzen following The Corrections (2001), into fame. Since this is a novel …
April 29, 2010
‘Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family’s Fueds’ by Lyndall Gordon
Culture
Central to Lyndall Gordon’s biography of Henry James is an extraordinary scene. As daylight fades over Venice, James drops a dead woman’s dresses into the lagoon. But the garments fill with air and won’t drown, pressing up against the novelist’s …
February 25, 2010
‘Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion and Jewelry’ by Leanne Shapton
Culture
In Thomas Hardy’s elegiac poem ‘During Wind and Rain’ there are “Clocks and carpets and chairs / On the lawn all day”. As any trawler of flea markets can attest, a terrible vulnerability attaches to private belongings exposed to public view. …
December 4, 2009
‘The Anthologist’ by Nicholson Baker
arts
“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 a telemarketing sort of way, and it signals the didactic intent of the narrative. This beginning also …