Ben Etherington

‘Though few would associate one with the other, the ‘Bard of Bunyah’ and the writer once renowned for being the country’s first Aboriginal novelist lived remarkably parallel literary lives. They were born three months apart in 1938; they both lost parents early in life and endured difficult childhoods in rural towns; they led somewhat peripatetic existences in their early twenties before publishing their first books to modest acclaim in 1965; they rose in reputation through the 1970s and 80s (Murray much more quickly than Mudrooroo) and by the 1990s had become singular presences in Australian literature; they had life and career defining moments in 1996 that brought on the final phase of their literary careers. Last year, they died four months apart. In all, Murray spent 42 more days on this earth than Mudrooroo.’

‘The first question to ask of the Craven phenomenon is not “why?” but “how?”‘ Critic Watch on performative criticism.

‘Quite a few countries now use income contingent loans for student fees, but only in Australia do they hold such an unimpeachable place in ongoing debates about the financial and social logic of higher education.’

‘The Booker needs this year’s winner, Marlon James’s A Brief History of Seven Killings, and, fortunately on this occasion the judges haven’t gotten in the way. The novel, however, does not need the prize. This isn’t because it already had won a number of prizes; but because its imaginative force is self-evident and does not require the objectification of value that prizes provide. This is not to say that everyone who reads the novel will enjoy it, but that the enjoyment of any given reader is secondary to the novel’s own originality of conception and technical execution. Nor is this to say that its execution is perfect – like anything new, its failings are an essential part of it.’ Ben Etherington on Marlon James and post-independence West Indian fiction.

No one believes that most Australian poetry volumes are a couple of edits or a tempered excess away from being a perfect version of themselves, but this is what, en masse, the reviews tell us. A biddable reader will have the impression that all debutants are ones to watch; that, three volumes in, all poets have consolidated their style; and that after five or more volumes they are accomplished and take their place in the nation’s poetic story. The quantum of praise does not add up.

Pyne is attempting to divert the function and aims of knowledge in our society. His policy clinches and fully institutionalises the worldview that understands education entirely as a private good. The public benefits of major scientific discovery, rigorous social diagnosis, and cultural imagination will henceforth be the generous efflorescence of private ambition.

How do we understand the critical response to Hannah Kent’s Burial Rites? In order to distinguish authentic aesthetic judgements amongst the reviews it will help to consider the way the advance for Burial Rites fits into the logic of trade book publishing.

How do you review the ‘experimental novel’? Critic Watch turns its gaze to the reviews of Anthony Macris’ Great Western Highway: A Love Story (Capital, Volume One, Part Two). With a response from Jeffrey Poacher.

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

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