Michael Sun
Michael Sun is a writer and critic based on Gadigal land/Sydney. His work has appeared in Guardian Australia, The Monthly, ABC Arts, Vice, The Age, Liminal magazine, and many more. He is a co-host of Saved for Later, a Guardian podcast about internet culture, as well as a weekly show on FBi Radio.
All essays by Michael Sun
Against Lifestyle
Slowly, Shirley also reveals itself as an anti-lifestyle text. For each sparkling marker of inner-city affluence, there is an equal and opposite undercurrent of dread edging the novel towards murkier territory. The clearest – but also least interesting – instance is the enigma which frames the book: an ostensibly antic affair regarding the narrator’s mother, once a well-regarded celebrity chef whose career was halted many years ago when she was photographed outside her house smeared in blood. Whose blood? What happened?
I Will Be The Most Esoteric Person On The Bus
When I am on the road, risking it all with a rusted-off chain and creaky saddle, I want to be seen, my existence hailed into being only in relation to the cars beside me. I want to be acknowledged by these hulking machines – which, I’m sure, could crush me like a bug without a moment’s hesitation were it not for their simpering drivers inside – as something formidable, something unknowable but fearsome all the same. I present myself like a challenge. Go on then, run me over.