Pseuds Corner - No.10

- an occasional selection of the worst of the Australian media-sphere, with particular attention to arts and political commentary that is pompous, pretentious, over-written, self-important, knowing instead of knowledgeable, name-dropping, euphemistic, cliche'd or sloppily written to the point of meaninglessness. . .

Cave's saturnine persona refutes Australian national optimism and its chirpy creed of "No worries". This is why he was so intent on colaborating with Kylie. One druggy evening in March in 1992, he persuaded a fan to give him a little pink and baby-blue plastic bag with Kylie's name on it, now on show at the National Library; he toted the candy-coloured trinket around the world, hoping it transmitted a message. In 1996 she fell for the bait and sweetly permitted him to slay her in "Where the Wild Roses Grow". They make an odd couple in the video. Frankenstein's lumbering monster has apparently convinced Ramsay St's fluffy, sugary Charlene to go out on a date. It was a sacrificial act, designed to ravage the suburban Australia of barbequed nature strips, trilling budgies and unstained laundry happily flapping on rotary clothes lines. - Cave has compared Australia to the Holy Land, but only because its terrain is so stark and unhallowed . . . "More flies than at the Cruxifiction", comments Euchrid in And the Ass Saw the Angel, futilely brushing away the winged filth that crawls on his skin. Who but an Australian, picturing Golgotha, would listen for the hum and drone of the blowies that surely converged on Christ's succulent wounds? (Peter Conrad, The Monthly)

I’m a morning person if you accept that morning is a state of mind, beginning when you decide it should. I think Descartes said something like you shouldn’t let anyone get you out of bed until you’re good and ready if you want to do decent mathematics. In a perfect world, it would be the same with writing, of course. But even on little sleep the morning can be golden for creative work, the brain surprisingly deft, somehow reborn. (Kristel Thornell on the meaning of morning, Melbourne Writers Festival blog)

I’ve been in a lot of aeroplanes lately – flying out from Melbourne, flying in novels, and in dreams. Sometimes the ports look similar. Familiar, unfamiliar. My life is literature, is writing, is reading, and always passion, and there are good and bad things about being intertwined with fiction, about consistent imagining. It can be expansive, but also irrepressible. It can thrill or bother me at three o’clock in the morning. - But then, flying somewhere to talk about it - to share on stage, in a workshop, over a glass of wine - these habitations of the mind, connections formed on the page, worlds opened up, emotional educations or confirmations. - The next chance to do this is somewhere close to where I grew up – Byron Bay. I can’t wait to dig my feet in the sand, and to dig deep into the minds of authors. (Angela Meyer on being a Busy Byron Bay Writers Festival Bee, Literary Minded)

Want to know my favourite sex toy? My wooden spoon. I use it to cook lamb stir-fry, sweet potato soup and Mediterranean vegetable frittata. Another bedroom aid? The duster, broom or nappy wipes. . . You can imagine the dream scenario: as I approach 35, my life is part Voltaire, part Viagra. When I'm not cooking three dinners, wiping snot out of my daughter's eyes, or impaling my foot on Lego starships, my wife and I are enjoying tender hours of lovemaking. . . I jest, but the 'Mentally Sexy Dad' is a real phenomenon. The brainchild of blogger Clint Greagen at Reservoir Dad, the competition celebrates men who're committed to a more balanced family life. It's a reminder: men who clean, cook and parent are hot stuff. . . This is the logic behind Reservoir Dad's competition. In an irreverent way, Clint is trying to highlight the attractiveness of alternative masculine domesticity. Of course this involves a little beefcake: bulging guns or tight bums in little undies. But this is only the most obvious allure. More than anything else, these are men who refuse to be bound by traditional gender roles. They can be tough, brawny and probably boozy - but they also wash, cook, clean and kid-wrangle. In this, the competition, also running the United States, is a celebration of today's real new age man: not stereotypically emasculated or wimpy, but caring, careful and committed. It's not a denial of what most men in Western societies do. It's an expansion of it: showing how their energy and perseverance can be broadened and enriched; how they can be bigger men, not in waistline, but in spirit. They're 'mentally sexy' because they've given their responsibilities and ideals thought, and demonstrated will, intelligence and foresight. It's about the allure of the soul, not just the biceps. (Damon Young, "Mentally sexy dads", ABC The Drum Unleashed)

Thank God I am not a squid, I think as I watch the unimaginable ordeals of so many animals; thank God I am not a gannet chick swallowed alive by a pelican; thank God I am not expected once a year to crawl up cliffs a million times higher than myself?. - Perhaps some of the gratification of nature documentaries is in reminding us of our own animal truths. . . Life reminds me of a favourite poem by Mary Oliver, Wild Geese, simple and moving because it speaks of the knowledge we have when we shiver in cold, when we are hungry, when we are frightened: that we are warm, living beasts, no less, little more:
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk
on your knees for a
hundred miles through
the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the
soft animal of your body
love what it loves. (Kate Holden, "A cosmos of wonders imparts its cosy glow", The Age)

I was startled by Professor Gillian Whitlock's reading of my essay 'After the Academy' (Australian Book Review, June/July 2002). She appears to think that my choice of 'romantic', 'organic' tropes and of such generally non-U discourses as 'settler autobiographics' was unwitting, and that I had somehow managed to get through seventeen years as a full time academic without achieving self-awareness in my own writing practice, and without being so much as touched by the ideas or the language by which I was surrounded. . .
There is, of course, no such thing as ME (I take it this was a laboured pun on campus-specific essentialist crimes; if not, it is now), and if Professor Whitlock claims to have no heart or soul then who am I to argue? As far as the development of the academic self over time is concerned, there can be no clear distinction between the 'sandstones' and the 'gumleaves', for most of us are the hybrid offspring of both, or perhaps I should say that our selves are constructed on the site where the various discourses circulating around both intersect. (Kerryn Goldsworthy responds to Gillian Whitlock, Australian Humanities Review)

The Almodóvar that was before us had all the suspense and sparkle in the world. - Yes, and by the grace of God, most of the acting was superb. Wendy Hughes had just the right kind of hauteur and quivering warmth as the famous actress who is besotted with her girlfriend and is the unwitting destroyer of the boy. This is a big handsome performance in the role that was recreated on the London stage by Diana Rigg, and Hughes gives it a sort of bewildered vulnerability in the midst of decaying magnificence that is splendid and also splendidly matched by Peta Sergeant, who sizzles with sexiness and self-pity as the damaged damsel who is her Stella and her Atthis. . .
Some of the other parts are, admittedly, played a bit cheesily. Katie Fitchett was too much a sketch of bouncy goodness and then long-suffering nobility as the nun who gets pregnant and then infected with HIV. And Jolyon James is far too effete and goonish as the actor who plays Stanley, but he’s a lot better as the missing father in drag. - This is not a flawless production but it is full of a wild energy and a counter-balancing grace that delivers a contemporary masterpiece full of all the dramatic and cinematic echoes in the world, which is all at once full of life and of the magic that gives it form. (Peter Craven, "Comedy and energy - and tears" Australian Spectator)