Welcome to the September Fiction issue! Here you will find the 2014 Jolley Prize shortlisted stories from Faith Oxenbridge, Cate Kennedy, and winner Jennifer Down. Also in the Fiction Issue: Maria Takolander on short stories, Mary Cunnane on the art of pitching, an interview with Penguin publisher Ben Ball, and ten notable Australian writers discuss their favourite short-story collections. Delia Falconer reviews Mark Henshaw’s second novel, appearing twenty-six years after his début, Felicity Plunkett reviews Helen Garner’s confronting ‘This House of Grief’, and Joel Deane reviews two titles on Julia Gillard and the Labor government.
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Kent MacCarter’s third collection of poems comprises a patchwork of forms and phenomena, in parts influenced by and dedicated to poets of the New York School and the ‘Generation of 1968’. MacCarter’s own cosmopolitan greetings share the offbeat tones and imagery of precursors, including Frank O’Hara and John Forbes. Touches of the former’s dry humour permeate Sputnik’s Cousin,alongside edgier local presences apparent in the poetry.
Book 1 Title: Sputnik's Cousin
Book 1 Subtitle: New poems
Book Author: Kent MacCarter
Book 1 Biblio: Transit Lounge, $24 pb, 144 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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Kent MacCarter’s third collection of poems comprises a patchwork of forms and phenomena, in parts influenced by and dedicated to poets of the New York School and the ‘Generation of 1968’. MacCarter’s own cosmopolitan greetings share the offbeat tones and imagery of precursors, including Frank O’Hara and John Forbes. Touches of the former’s dry humour permeate Sputnik’s Cousin,alongside edgier local presences apparent in the poetry.
Characters on the verge of a breakthrough populate this impressive début short story collection. An aspiring artist in ‘Making It’ is unsure whether a tilt at greatness is worth the personal sacrifice. In ‘Scar’, a middle-aged geologist feels conflicted by prospective fatherhood and observes, ‘Against that slow patience of stone the need to reproduce had always seemed like vanity.’ Low’s stories cover an ambitious range of locations from Melbourne to Mongolia; his prose is energetic and inspired.
Book 1 Title: Arms Race
Book Author: Nic Low
Book 1 Biblio: Text Publishing, $27.99 pb, 248 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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Characters on the verge of a breakthrough populate this impressive début short story collection. An aspiring artist in ‘Making It’ is unsure whether a tilt at greatness is worth the personal sacrifice. In ‘Scar’, a middle-aged geologist feels conflicted by prospective fatherhood and observes, ‘Against that slow patience of stone the need to reproduce had always seemed like vanity.’ Low’s stories cover an ambitious range of locations from Melbourne to Mongolia; his prose is energetic and inspired.
Article Title: An intellectual biography of a prolific theorist
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Albert O. Hirschman (1915–2012) was a development economist and political theorist whose work is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding how economic life figures in the political worlds we inhabit and the ways in which we give meaning to our lives in market-based societies. Perhaps best known for the distinction between ‘exit’ and ‘voice’, Hirschman was a prolific theorist who wrote about the role individual moral virtue and individual self-interest should play in economic activity, how economic growth in the developing world might best be achieved, and the reactionary rhetoric of neo-conservative politicians in the late 1980s, to list but some of the areas he covered. Hirschman’s writing was elegant; further, he understood the importance of the well-chosen word. He was, as this new biography by Jeremy Adelman shows, an economist for whom the essays of Montaigne were as important as the writings of Ricardo and Smith.
Book 1 Title: Worldly Philosopher
Book 1 Subtitle: The odyssey of Albert O. Hirschman
Book Author: Jeremy Adelman
Book 1 Biblio: Princeton University Press (Footprint Books), $74 hb, 754 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
Book 2 Title: The Essential Hirschman
Book 2 Author: Jeremy Adelman
Book 2 Biblio: Princeton University Press (Footprint Books), $47.95 hb, 401 pp
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Albert O. Hirschman (1915–2012) was a development economist and political theorist whose work is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding how economic life figures in the political worlds we inhabit and the ways in which we give meaning to our lives in market-based societies. Perhaps best known for the distinction between ‘exit’ and ‘voice’, Hirschman was a prolific theorist who wrote about the role individual moral virtue and individual self-interest should play in economic activity, how economic growth in the developing world might best be achieved, and the reactionary rhetoric of neo-conservative politicians in the late 1980s, to list but some of the areas he covered. Hirschman’s writing was elegant; further, he understood the importance of the well-chosen word. He was, as this new biography by Jeremy Adelman shows, an economist for whom the essays of Montaigne were as important as the writings of Ricardo and Smith.
Hirschman, it must be said, led a remarkable life, as even the most cursory reading of this biography will attest. Many devoted readers of his work in the social sciences would, I imagine, be completely unaware of the extent to which this writer of scholarly tomes was politically and culturally engaged with some of the most significant historical events and movements of the twentieth century.
Australia’s history is chequered at best. For every story of military heroism, there is one of discomfiting prejudice. So it is with Christine Piper’s After Darkness, which explores Australian history from the point of view of a Japanese doctor, Tomakazu Ibaraki, arrested as a national threat while in Broome, and sent to the Loveday internment camps in regional South Australia.
Book 1 Title: After Darkness
Book Author: Christine Piper
Book 1 Biblio: Allen & Unwin, $27.99 pb, 297 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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Australia’s history is chequered at best. For every story of military heroism, there is one of discomfiting prejudice. So it is with Christine Piper’s After Darkness, which explores Australian history from the point of view of a Japanese doctor, Tomakazu Ibaraki, arrested as a national threat while in Broome, and sent to the Loveday internment camps in regional South Australia.
