Essays

Hobbyist doggerel and Booty Calls: Ben Etherington on Quadrant, government subsidies, and the Books of the Year. Plus a response from Jennifer Maiden.

Have Australians overcome the cultural cringe and learned, as Phillips hoped they would, ‘the art of being unselfconsciously ourselves’? I am less sanguine about rumours of cringe’s demise…I think an example of how the cringe currently operates can be found by examining an increasingly marginal – if symbolically important – cultural form: the single-author short story collection.

It is conventional wisdom in the publishing business that newspaper reviews, even negative ones, can help to sell books. But while book publishers are beset by structural changes to their industry … the newspaper business is suffering an even more painful struggle, to evolve or die.

Some people pursue new trends, some people seek to preserve the past, but we all find it very difficult to shake off the influence of tradition. Tradition, like air, is everywhere.

The rhetoric of the publicity campaign for the Classics series is grounded in blame and indignation about the alleged ‘neglect’ of Australian literature by publishers, editors, journalists and, most of all, academics…

Is there an ‘epidemic of niceness’ in book reviewing? Ben Etherington examines the critical responses to Anna Funder’s All That I Am.