Category Archive: WRITING & LITERATURE
Disgrace
(J.M. Coetzee) David Lurie, Capetown Professor of Communications (nee Romance Literature) catches his favourite escort in a domestic moment, causing her to retire for shame, so he starts a pilot ‘A’s for lays’ scheme that forces him from campus, pride (in self and deed) stopping him from recanting. This episode could fill a novel in itself (shades of Kafka or Helen Garner here, as the University Board of Enquiry into the harassment charge, whilst containing some members who are Lurie’s allies or at least neutral, reveal, in time-honoured ivy league fashion, another quasi-judicial body with complete ignorance of the maxim…
Continue Reading →Sixty Stories
Hamster image courtesy of Nanny99
(Donald Barthelme) (stories 1964 – c. 1980) A big anthology was always going to be a publishing challenge for a master miniaturist. The longer pieces here feel forced, repetitive (without consolatory cadence), smacking of desperation and Rushdie-like lists. When Barthelme works out an angle and sticks to it, he can be very good. His famous hit, ‘The School’, is hilarious. He is also menacingly funny where the violence is barely suppressed: in ‘Game’, two men are going berserk while stationed at a missile silo; there’s a kind of Straw Dogs meets Sleepers scenario in ‘For I’m the Boy’; in ‘On…
Continue Reading →Twelfth Night
Twelfth Night or What You Will (William Shakespeare) (1601-2) Adelaide 18 December 2014 TVC saw a theatrical reading of the Bard’s best comedy on a blustery summer evening in Victoria Square, the Square expensively revamped with little evidence of revamp. Yet kudos to the Council for the initiative of returning some varnished culture to the city’s jaded heart. Twelfth Night, produced by Holly Myers (also an excellent Viola), was played as Harold Bloom prescribed – “at the frenetic tempo that befits this company of zanies and antics.” Unlike much of the cast’s aspect in Trevor Nunn’s (1996) sombre film, here…
Continue Reading →Captain Cook’s Voyages 1768-1779
(James Cook) Stirring accounts of Cook’s scissoring across the world in leaky boats, to places often unexplored, from South America, Africa, South East Asia, the Bering Sea & Strait and all over the Pacific. This book is based on Cook’s journals and reports to Admiralty, selected by Glyndwr Williams for the Folio edition (1997). Cook was one of a handful of giants in exploration when about a third of the world was unknown. By the time he was lethally sandwiched by natives in Hawaii, he had become famous in his homeland and well known to much of the rest of…
Continue Reading →The Book Show
Summer 2014, Ultimo TVC loves this show, although the initial set was a shameless rip off of “Hidden”. A great argument for the national broadcaster, although surely the Fry-B-C could muck along for a few millions less? We attended a taping some time back (incognito) and thus got stalker-close to Ms Byrne, Ms Hardy and Mr Steger plus guest. Jennifer Byrne is the perfect host – charming, open-minded, enthusiastic (but no pushover – she does generally not abide shite). Marieke Hardy is P’s favourite, hardiest critic – she and P may share few opinions overall, but when she hates something,…
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