Comments for Overland literary journal

Comment on Reading like your sanity depends upon it by Michael Brull

Michael Brull — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 07:47:28 +0000

Am reading Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel, Socialism Today and Tomorrow.

Have lots of books on shelf (as always).

Comment on The passing of Generation Kill by Stephen Wright

Stephen Wright — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 04:36:56 +0000

Borges is the greatest ’short story’ writer there is. And he lives on that fiction/non-fiction knife-edge. Of course its not a knife-edge to him. To Borges its the size of the MCG. Which is why he’s so great and nearly everyone else is so crap.

Comment on Reading like your sanity depends upon it by Jane GW

Jane GW — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 04:36:11 +0000

Thanks for mentioning the Guardian piece on ‘The Slap’ Jeff, just found it (under booker http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jul/31/the-slap-christos-tsiolkas-booker)

Why strange? I thought it expressed pretty well the novel’s divisiveness. I’ve spoken on panels about editing since its publication and if anyone discovers I worked on it the whole focus turns to ‘The Slap’. One woman told me she hated it and every character in it so much that she threw it in the bin when she finished it. I thought it was the perfect comment: she hated it to bits. But she read it to the end. It’s un-put-downable. And I think fact it raises such passionate responses in readers, for good or bad, is why it’s been such a smash hit.

Comment on The passing of Generation Kill by Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 04:32:17 +0000

Gus: This is a very interesting question you are asking I think. Perhaps Wikileaks needs multiple tellers, a million tellers. The Guardian and so forth, privileged their own reading of it, and I believe that when this happens again and Wikileaks team up with major media groups they will demand as a pre-condition highly visible links to the source meterial.
I just used ‘fiction’, even though I don’t believe in it, but because sometime sits just easier. You are right though, ‘teller’ is much better. But I am not sure that the Wikileaks material is ‘bare fact’.It’s highly contextualised in many ways.

Comment on Farewell Jessica Anderson (1916–2010) – and thanks by Jane GW

Jane GW — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 04:29:49 +0000

Thanks Delia. And I love the other resonance of the title you mention, which I didn’t know. You put it so beautifully you make my hairs stand on end, story of your mother reciting Tennyson on the Nullarbor.

Comment on The passing of Generation Kill by Gus

Gus — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 02:01:32 +0000

I’m not thinking of any fiction/non-fiction dichotomy.
“Storyteller” can imply “fiction writer” but you would
have noticed that I used the neutral “teller” in my next post. Your over-ambitious
fiction writer seems to want to produce something
intensely personal, emotionally potent and effective
of change. Against this you set the narrative of
the wikileaks. The label of non-fiction is implicit.But now instead of an impossible narrative
we have one that writes itself. I admit not having visited the wikileaks but
allow me to imagine them as unmarshaled documents. There
shouldn’t be any pre-existing story in bare facts, at least
as far as I understand the universe. We can each make up
our own stories from wikileaks but it would be better to
have something shared. Wikileaks needs a teller, like
generation kill had Evan Wright perhaps. I think you’re
doing a pretty good job. And I’m never again going to
attempt a serious post without a right hand margin and
20 mins till the shops close. Why “fiction” writer?

Comment on Reading like your sanity depends upon it by Jane GW

Jane GW — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 01:46:29 +0000

On behalf of all the 12 year old boys I know (not that I’m equating all readers of China with pre-teen boys), China Mieville’s ‘Un Lun Dun’ rocks.

I see nothing particularly comfy about the books everyone here’s reading, Stephen. For sanity I often read something as scandalously Sunday morning as poetry, recently I’m loving the comfy old Siegfried Sassoon:

‘You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you’ll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.’

Comment on Reading like your sanity depends upon it by Jeff

Jeff — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 01:42:52 +0000

Let’s not make reading lists into some kind of competition, shall we!
I wouldn’t have compared mieville to peake. They’re very different writers. Mieville might not be everyone’s cup of tea but IMO he’s a really exciting and consistently interesting writer, who has pushed the boundaries of political SF.
Btw, there’s a very strange article in today’s guardian about Christos Tsiolkas

Comment on Reading like your sanity depends upon it by will

will — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 01:35:22 +0000

In the middle of Dumas’ ‘The count of Monte Cristo’-ridiculous good fun.
Also, Jacinda, if you’re interested I’d recommend Bolano’s book of poetry ‘The romantic dogs’ if someone else hasn’t already done so.

Comment on Reading like your sanity depends upon it by Boris Kelly

Boris Kelly — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 01:29:18 +0000

reCapthca: ’surfeited what’
Like a reply in a DeLillo dialogue.

Wallace saw too much, possessed of an unreasonable acuity and the stories in Oblivion reflect this, so dip in.

His essays are wonderful too as your erudite self probably knows. For those who haven’t read it ‘Consider the Lobster’ is a piece he did for Gourmet magazine (2004). He covered the Maine Lobster Festival in excruciating, deeply funny detail. A consumption fest at the centre of which were thousands of boiling lobtsters clawing at the lids of pots. He manages to write a confronting moral treatise in a foodie magazine, with considerable leeway granted by his editor.

Comment on Reading like your sanity depends upon it by Boris Kelly

Boris Kelly — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 01:16:14 +0000

“For a reading list that’s titled ‘reading like your sanity depends on it’ it reads so far more like ‘reading as though your comfy sunday morning lie-in depends on it.”

La-de-da, Stephen.With a reading list like yours I can see why Sunday lie-ins are an object of mockery. Definitely a garret list yours. Ha ha. I mean that in a nice way.

Comment on Reading like your sanity depends upon it by Benjamin Laird

Benjamin Laird — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 01:14:07 +0000

I think quoting a comparison of Mervyn Peake to cut down me old China is a bit of Straw Man.

Journalist / reviewers always love to make outrageous comparisons like comparing Clive Barker to HP Lovecraft or any number of modern fantasy authors to Tolkien. It makes me wonder whether they read the books and if so what were they thinking?

Comment on Reading like your sanity depends upon it by jacinda

jacinda — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 00:59:17 +0000

I don’t think we should confuse reading with political activity, or privilege it above other forms of culture (or certain kinds of education).

I chose this title and post. It’s a chance for people to share what they’re reading so other people can discover the obscure and the nerdy and the well-known and the not so well-known. One person’s trash is another person’s sanity, so they say. And for me, reading in bed on a Sunday morning does sometimes keep me sane.

I actually don’t see the difference between ‘Sunday’ reading and other kinds of reading.

Comment on Thinking about democracy by Sharon Callaghan

Sharon Callaghan — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 00:34:31 +0000

Thanks for this. It seems so easy for countries like Australia to sign conventions/charters to protect the rights of the most vulnerable, like children, yet take actions that undermine the rights and safety of a child by detaining them in prisons. The label of democracy – when not taken seriously – is like a façade that can hide so many injustices.

Comment on Reading like your sanity depends upon it by Stephen Wright

Stephen Wright — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 00:29:01 +0000

No, I started reading Fanon (Wretched of the earth) when I
was 18.
China Mieville is one of the lamest, most 2-dimensional over-hyped writers there is. I remember him being promoted as a second Mervyn Peake. He’s no more Mervyn Peake than I’m Pele. Oh well, scratch an intellectual and there’s always a nerd trying to get out I always say. For a reading list that’s titled ‘reading like your sanity depends on it’ it reads so far more like ‘reading as though your comfy sunday morning lie-in depends on it.”
I should also add to my list Edward Said’s regular columns in Al-Ahram, that he was writing up until he died. Wonderful to get them in my inbox. That’s when I really started to love the internet.