Journal
Articles
Help yourself
If we cannot live in the world and escape self-help, as the memoirist Jessica Lamb-Shapiro so wryly observes, we can hardly condemn its virulence without also being struck by its sheer resilience. At best, self-help might broadly inform, inspire and instruct, representing one of the most obvious – though not the most auspicious – mechanisms through which psychological and philosophical insights diffuse to a generalist audience.
Undervalued and overlooked
Western Sydney is home to half of Sydney’s population, and 10 per cent of the population nationwide. In other words, at least 10 per cent of the nation lives in a metropolitan area with almost no bookstores. But the real kicker is this: in Western Sydney, it’s almost impossible to buy books by authors who write from and about Western Sydney.
Behind the bestsellers
The argument that independent and small book grocers have a more impressive and widespread range has held for a long time, but in May, Big W was awarded the prestigious Book Retailer of the Year at the Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIAs)... Recognition on this level legitimises the sales of books for half their value.
Giving ethnics response-ability in multicultural Australia
The poles of evil White nationalist and good White nationalist hold between them the thread of the White nation fantasy – the good White nationalist (who believes in the good of multiculturalism) can only exist if the evil White nationalist (the racist Hansonite) also exists...
Calling it out
But the best thing about an intriguing new call-out is that it’s near impossible to not write something new if you want to submit. You can’t jam your shitty old story no other journal wanted into a niche call-out about the pleasure of weekend garage sales. Whether that journal accepts your work or not, at least you’ve got a new piece to play around with at the end.
Once/Now
IT WAS A night in at Maree’s place, which she found strange, as it was Brad who had recently purchased a new TV. Maree sat in one corner of the couch, knees up to her chest. Brad was on the other side, upright, a glass of scotch resting on the couch arm. Maree had not been to Brad’s place in quite some time.
Let there be light
Whether they’re personal, cultural or religious, these are the stories that offer us ways of orienting ourselves amid the sheer chaos and confusion of being alive – particularly today, as humanity’s existential and environmental crises continue to mount.
Once upon a self
For Plato, most notably, drama and poetry were to be regarded with intense moral and political suspicion: they made malevolent characters intelligible to their audiences; they use up our real moral sentiments by arousing them for fictional characters; and by depicting certain traits and tropes they risked seducing audiences into acting them out themselves.
On undoing
I am forty before I visit Europe, still ignorant that a century before me my great-grandfather had walked those same cobblestones. That he had fought in a war that did not reward him with any meaningful welcome on his return home. Now that I know, I yearn to go back and breathe that air, knowing that William was there.
Into the swamp
Some versions of environmentalism understandably encourage an almost Swiftian misanthropy, with the ecological collapse framed as the inevitable response of nature to a pestiferous humanity, the only species that, by its very existence, destroys all that it touches. But maybe, just maybe, it doesn’t have to be that way.
A Martuwarra Serpent stirs in its sleep…
Aboriginal people are usually confident in the enduring nature of knowledge (not just belief) because that other mob down the road has the same story, or a similar one. It is a multispecies and layered story, and that is precisely what makes it creative, unlike so much of continuing Western materialist ideas and practices.
Everybody loves beginnings
Beginnings are a breaking of silence that give some indication as to why the silence ought to have been broken, and the prospects of such a breaking. Why should I have broken my silence and begun this discourse? And why should the difficulties of breaking this silence, difficulties that for some reason I must enact in order to ameliorate, appear so manifestly predictable to me?
