Category: Literature and Culture
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Speed Reading
Midsummer was an interesting time for online discussions of literature and the reasons for which readers of literature actually read. Kevin Hartnett and the team at The Millions were the first to kick the hornets’ nest when they “asked nine English scholars to choose one novel as the greatest our country has ever produced. Of course, we explained, the…
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A Reorientation
Links to Jacob Silverman’s notes “against enthusiasm” have been popping up in my RSS and Twitter feeds for a few of weeks now, first when they appeared as brief remarks on Silverman’s blog and again when Silverman turned them into an article published last week on Slate. In most instances the links have been accompanied by either praise for Silverman’s…
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What Need?
Over the last few months, at the blog of the New York Review of Books, Tim Parks has been posting a succession of lighthearded but provocative musings on the norms and nature of reading and writing. In February, he questioned the transformation of writing from a personal vocation into a profession. “[W]hen did being a…
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Discussing UNESCO Cities of Literature
Heads up. I wrote about Melbourne’s UNESCO City of Literature initiative a while ago, drawing a pretty unfavourable comparison between Melbourne’s efforts to capitalise on its City of Literature status and the remarkable things Edinburgh has achieved after it became the first UNESCO City of Literature in 2004. Have Melbourne’s efforts improved in the last year?…
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Genius?
What counts as genius? Sometimes it’s clear-cut: in 1981, with four sophisticated but commercially lacklustre novels to his credit, Cormac McCarthy used his Fellowship to fund the writing of Blood Meridian, arguably one of the greatest American novels of the twentieth century. Other times, it’s more counterintuitive: in 1988, with Lot 49, Gravity’s Rainbow, and…
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Cultural Cringe
Dear world: on behalf of the Australian people, I’d like to apologise for Christos Tsiolkas. In my experience, one of the most irritating things about simply being Australian is that, whenever you make any initial attempt to participate in any sort of cultural enterprise alongside anyone from virtually anywhere in the Western world, you must…
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A Tale of Two Cities
Yesterday I spent a couple of hours at the Wheeler Centre for Books, Writing, and Ideas in central Melbourne. In 2008, Melbourne become the second UNESCO City of Literature following the initial granting of that title to Edinburgh in 2004. As part of the city’s bid for the title, the Victorian state government agreed to…
Infinite Patience 