Byron Bay Writers FestivalAUGUST 7-9, Reviving the corpus of australian literatureMacquarie Pen Anthology of
australian literature
, General Editor Nicholas Jose Allen Unwin . hardcover Moya CostelloIts a moment filled with tenderness if not pathos to see a feather sailing through the air as the image on the Macquarie Pen Anthology of australian Literature symbolising the fate or nature of our literature. There has been notable debate and complaint in literary circles about so much of australian literature, primarily that deemed to be in the canon, being out of print although equally noting what is available online in digitised form. As Nicholas Jose, general editor of the anthology, writes, the feather stands for indeterminacy, reinvention, openness to redefinition, open-endedness, survival, social agency, disruptiveness, trespassing, and power, grace, and beauty. Being airy and mobile are good qualities for a national literature, better than being well, dead and forgotten. Jose has suggested that there is noBYRONS BEAUTIFUL BOUTIQUEHAS SOMETHING FOR EVERYONEWINTER SALECnr Byron and Fletcher Streetcorpse but a corpus of australian literature as a living field of enquiry and engagement the regular presence of Australian authors on international award lists, for example. This anthology follows the Macmillan one, which itself is out of print. It ends with Vietnamese-Australian Chi Vu who is among writers established by . The first Aboriginal writer in the collection is Bennelong with a letter to Arthur Phillip and the last the thirty-seven-year-old poet, Samuel Wagan Watson. In between theres the Gurindji land petition from Vincent Lingiari We, the leaders of the Gurindji people, write to you about our earnest desire to regain tenure of our tribal lands . Kev Carmodys song about the petition, From Little Things Big Things Grow, is also there. For those readers passionate about and devoted to Australian literature, there are disagreements to make about selections. Ill take as my case study the work from Amanda Lohrey, the prologue to Camilles Bread, which I might OFFsay is not representative of either that novel or her larger oeuvre. Her novels are highly politicised encounters in the practice of everyday life. Her essays equally dissect politics at a national level. Nevertheless, this choice of Lohreys work is clearly aimed at suggesting interesting connections and telling contrasts which make us sit up, take notice, and rethink and reshape our vision of our national literature. For the prologue might indeed be an encounter with the politicised everyday. And Lohreys work is changing. Her recent book, Vertigo, is a novella, a pastoral, and is both realist and magicalrealist. It reads like a song, a poem, and though earthy in its subject matter sea-changes, bush fires, and the death of a child, it is unearthly in its resonances. And it is published by a small independent Australian press. Just so we dont find the anthology too quirky as to cause confusion and defy meaning, there are well-known and wellloved choices an extract from Patrick Whites Voss, and The Prodigal Son In all directions stretched the Great Australian emptiness, in which the mindis the least of possessions Helen Garners The Life of Art throw yourself on the alternative life which is what I mean by the life of art, a story that hangs in my head like a talisman, and is always taken up enthusiastically by some writing students as a model of practice. Among the poets John Forbes Stalins Holidays, Ania Walwicz Australia you try to be friendlybut youre not very friendly and Gig Ryan If I Had a Gun. Among extracts from plays Hannie Rayson Hotel Sorrento and Louis Nowra Radiance. Childrens fiction from Of a Boy by Sonia Hartnett. And creative nonfiction from Robert Hughes Culture of Complaint, and Drusilla Modjeska Stravinskys Lunch those wonderful paintings, dense with yellow, in which a cupboard door swings open . Another quirky yet intriguing aspect of this anthology isthe biographical note on the writers. While there is no comment on the actual story The Life of the Party that represents the selection for Murray Bail, nevertheless Kerry Goldsworthys biographical note dissects his novel Eucalyptus Saturated with literary references and allusion, Eucalyptus is also a gender-reversed echo of the story of Scheherazade and a rewriting of the classic George Eliot novel Middlemarch. Anthologies can only ever be a sampling as Jose writes, best to think of indicative not exhaustive. The great role for this anthology is to establish the connection between our vibrant contemporary writing and its literary antecedents, to remind us that the sailing feather has come from somewhere, is afloat and heading in the right direction.Byrons beautiful boutique has something for everyone.Founding sponsor of theByron Bay Writers Festival. Proudly supporting the festival since its inception.Sales Department Lawson St Byron Bay Ph WINTER salecnr byron fletcher
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