Overland literary journal

Unfinished Sympathy*

Several years ago, when I was studying writing at university, a lecturer of mine expressed utter disdain when a student confessed to abandoning James Joyce’s Ulysses mid-way through. The lecturer, who was an author herself (well you’d want to hope so, wouldn’t you?), said that to give up on a book before the end was lazy and disrespectful to the author and Literature itself. This exchange took place in the first week of semester and, like the chap who asked how much a published author can expect to earn in a year, the student concerned did not return the following week. The rest of us sat nodding in agreement with our lecturer in an attempt to demonstrate that we had not only finished Ulysses, but read it several times, along with many fat books by Russian writers. I myself had to put extra effort into appearing smug to cover the fact that, not only had I never finished Ulysses, I had never started it either. (Unlike my grandfather, who started reading it under the false belief it was about motorcycle gangs.) What’s worse, I was guilty of abandoning several books – some of them ‘Classics’ – not two chapters in, but two chapters short of the end. (I tell you what: if you keep reading this post till the end, I’ll reveal what they were.) ... read more

Written by Claire Zorn on 25-08-2010, 51 user comments

The Library of Forgotten Books

For anyone who is interested, PS Publishing in the UK has recently released my collection, The Library of Forgotten Books. There’s a plain hardcover and a cool jacketed and signed hardcover. The reviews so far have been pretty positive. ... read more

Written by Rjurik Davidson on 19-08-2010, 4 user comments

Failed novels

So last month the girlfriend and I went to see Christopher Hitchens talk about his new book of memoirs. I'm not really into memoir so probably missed out on some of what he said, however, did get one real gem out of the evening.

Among other things, he and school friends – and later, other friends, including Salman Rushdie – used to play a game of inventing titles of books that didn't quite make it. The favored example given was Mr Gatsby.

This has of course inspired us to come up with as many failed book titles as we can. I've started with the following:

Alice in an Interesting Place
The Conjuror of Oz
The Moderately Well Known Five
Diary of a Prostitute
Anne of the Green Roof (and the sequel, Anne from a Small Town)
The Manipulative Mr Ripley
The Unconcluded Novel
Older Girls
American Lunatic
A Long While Alone ... read more

Written by Georgia Claire on 6-08-2010, 16 user comments

Almost (not) famous – or published

Here are ten reasons why you shouldn’t despair if you have an unpublished manuscript. These famous rejections are sure to cheer you up:

1. Can you imagine a world without Possum Magic? Apparently many publishers could. Mem Fox's classic was rejected nine times over five years. Little Hush would have remained invisible were it not for Omnibus Books in Adelaide. Originally called Hugh, the Invisible Mouse, Omnibus suggested changing the mice to possums, and the rest, as they say, is history. Since 1983 Possum Magic has sold 3.5 million copies, making it the bestselling Aussie kids’ book of all time. Speaking of magic leads me to … ... read more

Written by Irma Gold on 2-08-2010, 6 user comments

Reading like your sanity depends upon it

We at Overland don’t only take pleasure in deleting commas and rearranging words; we are also ardent readers. Things we have been reading lately include:

Rjurik Davidson

Last week I finished Hilary Mantel's A Place of Greater Safety, which brilliantly documents the French Revolution from the point of view (mainly) of Desmoulins, Robespierre and Danton.

Currently I'm reading Deborah Biancotti's Book of Endings, a collection of stories by the under-recognised Australian speculative fiction author. ... read more

Written by Editorial team on 30-07-2010, 35 user comments

Non-fiction review – Symbols of Australia

Symbols of Australia
Melissa Harper and Richard White (eds.)
UNSW Press

Symbols of Australia is a fascinating read, with a total of thirty writers dissecting and analysing the symbols of Australia, from the Opera House to the Coat of Arms, to the Pavlova Cooee and all in-between, everything’s up for grabs.

Symbols of Australia is much more than a brief history of Australian symbols; it’s a study of the symbols from a cultural studies perspective. The myriad meanings and contestations of the symbols are discussed as well as historical origins. Perhaps the best example of this is the chapter on The Southern Cross by Jane Taylor. She charts its existence from a constellation seen from Europe 2000 years ago, the topic of poems and mystical associations, to its material manifestation in the Eureka stockade. She then moves onto the present day and its embodiment as a symbol claimed by diverse and oppositional groups such as the Australian Communist Party, various unions, rednecks and the racist National Action. (Strangely she didn’t discuss its use by the BLF, probably the most well-known organisation to use it in the present day.) ... read more

Written by Rohan Wightman on 23-06-2010, 2 user comments

Non-fiction review –
Journeys to the Interior

Journeys to the Interior
Nicholas Rothwell
Black Inc.

I’d read a few articles by Nicholas Rothwell and was somewhat ambivalent about what I’d read. I was unsure of his political perspective on life in the NT. He'd made some good points, but often his conclusions disturbed me; this was especially true of some of his pieces on the Intervention in the Australian. ... read more

Written by Rohan Wightman on 18-06-2010, 8 user comments

Fiction review – Come Inside

Come Inside
GL Osborne
Freemantle Press

Come Inside is a beautifully written, evocative novel told from many perspectives and over a long expanse of time. Despite the possibility of the rather slim volume becoming heavied by such a vast and varying platform, it remains light and unburdened in tone. The reader, or at least this reader, feels that GL Osborne knew what she wanted to do with her novel and wasn’t going to be swayed by thinking she had to tie details together or fill in gaps. Strangely however, this may be the very thing that leads some to view the story as too vaguely formed. ... read more

Written by SJ Finn on 16-06-2010, 4 user comments

Fearful of fear itself –
the short stories of Graham Greene

‘The End of the Party’
Complete Short Stories
Graham Greene
Penguin

Graham Greene described his short stories as ‘scraps’, and ‘escapes from the novelist’s world’. ‘The End of the Party’, however, delves into the serious subjects of death, fear, faith and human relationships – common to many of his novels – woven into a dark, supernatural tale. Written in 1929, ‘The End of the Party’ is one of Greene’s earlier short stories. It originally appeared in Nineteen Stories (1947), and is now included in Twenty-One Stories (1954), and Complete Short Stories (2005). ... read more

Written by Lina Vale on 16-06-2010, 7 user comments

This is my confession

I have something to confess. I am a second-hand bookshop addict.

On a recent trip to Melbourne I stumbled across Artisan Books on Gertrude Street. It was bitingly cold and Artisan glowed with rich yellow light. How could I possibly refuse? Inside art and architecture hardbacks with gorgeous slipcovers competed for attention, and I whiled away a pleasant half an hour there. The discovery of a new bookshop is always a pleasure, but it got me thinking about how it’s the second-hand variety that really seduce me. ... read more

Written by Irma Gold on 8-06-2010, 13 user comments

Non-fiction review – POMO OZ: Fear and Loathing Downunder

POMO OZ: Fear and Loathing Downunder
Niall Lucy
Freemantle Press

Ah, postmodernism. The word makes us shudder, or cheer or jeer or laugh or roll our eyes. The multiplicity of reactions it engenders surely reflects the multiplicity of meanings it has accumulated. Reading Niall Lucy’s POMO OZ: Fear and Loathing Downunder, one is by turns entertained, informed and at a few points, I am sorry to say, indifferent. This minor quibble has nothing to do with the writer’s skill – the prose is lively or what I would tentatively and wankily describe as ‘sparky’ – and all to do with the topic itself. Is not postmodernism a little bit, you know, done? ... read more

Written by Matthew Sini on 28-05-2010, 5 user comments

Review – Neon Pilgrim

Neon Pilgrim
Lisa Dempster
Aduki Independent Press

I have never met Lisa Dempster, nor spoken to her. I’ve never written her an email and only recently subscribed to her blog. But I know Lisa Dempster very well because I just traveled 1200 kilometres with her through the mountains of Japan. Such is the intimacy of Neon Pilgrim, Lisa Dempster’s account of her pilgrimage along the henro michi, visiting 88 temples in the footsteps of Kobo Daishi, a ninth-century Buddhist monk. ... read more

Written by Mark William Jackson on 25-05-2010, 5 user comments

Review – Edible stories: Wetink
Issue 18

Someone once said that an artist's job is to hold the attention of an audience for as long as they require it. It may have been Oscar Wilde, but this reviewer suspects it was actually a character in The West Wing. Perhaps it was a character in The West Wing quoting Oscar Wilde – either way, it is a very sharp observation, particularly when applied to short fiction.

Issue 18 of the Australian quarterly Wet Ink is devoted largely to short fiction, with only three works of poetry. Short stories presented in a magazine format are tricky things. The challenge of holding a reader's attention is made greater because of the flicking impulse: the thumb which lurks around the edge of the pages, ready to flick the moment the reader's attention is swayed. Indeed, to borrow the wise words of Sally Field in Forest Gump, a collection of short stories is like a box of chocolates: so many tantalising options.* If one has a taste and finds they have struck a pineapple cream rather than a praline, they are free to abandon the enterprise and choose another treat. (This is less socially acceptable with chocolates.) Which only tempts the question: ‘Is Wet Ink full of pralines or pineapple creams? Com'on missy, stop stuffing your face with chocolates in the name of research, and tell us if we should buy it!’ ... read more

Written by Claire Zorn on 20-05-2010, No comments

The media and us

Lately when reading a newspaper I have to momentarily put it down, pick up a music magazine and flip through for something that will spark my interest such as a story on the forthcoming reissue of The Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street album which I’m sure will be a good one. At these moments I let my guard down, but when I go back to the newspaper, nagging suspicions often return.

And for those of us who fit the mould of an everyday media consumer, it shouldn’t come as any surprise when picking up that newspaper, switching on the TV or jumping on the net, that we are often left shaking our collective head in wonder at what some in the political arena think of meaningful participative democracy, particularly when faced with powerful interest groups. One recent example is the unified chorus of protest from voices in the mining sector and the Federal Opposition frontbench at the announcement of an increased mining tax. Whatever the outcome, I am sure that come election day, many voters will be standing in the booth with pencil wavering above the voting form which is an increasingly likely scenario these days. ... read more

Written by Dan Bigna on 17-05-2010, 1 user comment