'BATSHIT BORING BOOKS'

Tim Colebatch's review of my book Catch and Kill: The Politics of Power (November 2015) quotes a comment I made to The Age about not wanting to write 'one of those batshit boring books' about politics. For the record, I was not referring to his biography of Rupert Hamer, which I read and admired. The batshit boring books shall remain nameless. As shall their publisher.

Writing about masculinity is difficult. But Paul Dalgarno, a founding editor at The Conversation, accepted the challenge. In And You May Find Yourself, he expresses truths which never seem trite or indulged.

The book describes the author's relationship with his father, as well as the flaky bond he shares with his wife and sons. These anxieties are set against Dalgarno's relocation from Scotland to Melbourne. Dalgarno writes with hostility and anger, but the prose is often tender, and always candid. He pokes fun at male stereotypes: at school in Scotland Dalgarno formed a gang, notable for glue-sniffing, aggression, and the group-think of its members. But each boy must have been hiding something, as Dalgarno certainly was: he narrates his progress to the soundtrack of West Side Story.

Kate Howarth is the child of a single mother, father uncertain, brought up by her Aboriginal grandmother. She in turn becomes pregnant at sixteen. Determined to keep her son despite the pressure to give him up for adoption, she marries the father. The marriage doesn't go well and Kate leaves without her son, hoping to come back for him when she is settled, but things don't go as planned and she doesn't see him again for fourteen years. She goes on to build a successful career in the personnel industry by dint of intelligence and persistence, marries the boss, and builds up their firm to one of the country's most successful recruitment companies. This marriage is another loveless one, though, and she eventually 'pulls the plug'. A third marriage to an American met via internet dating is a fiasco when he turns out to be a penniless transvestite.

Arrival is the first volume in a new series of literary anthologies comprising previously unpublished fiction, non-fiction, and poetry edited by John Freeman, former editor of UK-based Granta. The book begins with a boring and self-indulgent introduction about the choice of theme: Arrival. Freeman explains that after experiencing serious turbulence on a flight to Syracuse, he 'never forgot how exhilarating it was to be welcomed back into gravity's gentler embrace'. He continues, 'Every time I read I look to re-create the feeling of arriving that day.'

Fortunately, the authors interpret this theme loosely and focus largely on the theme of returning to a time or place – a kind of 're-arrival' – that allows for the composition of haunting and uncanny works. What Freeman lacks in his introduction, he makes up in his ability to draw a stellar cast of writers. These include Dave Eggers, Lydia Davis, Haruki Murakami, and Anne Carson. The anthology begins with 'Six Shorts', a suite of untitled transnational autobiographies. Despite each piece ending with the author's name, the effect is of one long collaborative piece. It is the standout feature of the anthology; a brilliant form I hope more anthologies will adopt.