Writing in Elsewhere

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WAYNE MACAULEY INTERVIEWED (2013): You want fries with that book?

18 May 2013  |  10 min read  |  1

If you're a fan of MasterChef and have glossy recipe books on your shelves, then Melbourne's Wayne Macauley has a novel for you. If you despise the current overload of television cooking shows and obsession with food he's got exactly the same one. Macauley's The Cook – which won the inaugural 2012 Most Underrated Book Award in Australia – has been hailed as a brilliant... > Read more

NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY by RON RASH

30 Mar 2013  |  2 min read

Being praised by, among many others, Daniel Woodrell – the author of the bleak Winter's Bone which was made into a suitably monochromatic and emotionally grim feature film – is indicative of where Ron Rash's fiction lies on the graph. Woodrell's novel was set in the Ozark's where characters were haunted by methamphetamine addiction and poverty, Rash's sometimes not... > Read more

IN BETWEEN DAYS by ANDREW PORTER

24 Feb 2013  |  2 min read

Under a title which becomes increasingly ambiguous as his cleverly structured narrative gets deeper and darker (night? limbo?), American writer Porter has crafted a novel of emotional insight, increasing tension and a story which pulls the reader into unusual but always credible family circumstances. Porter lets details of a pivotal incident seep slowly through the narrative, the... > Read more

UNKNOWN PLEASURES; INSIDE JOY DIVISION read by PETER HOOK (8CD set)

16 Feb 2013  |  2 min read

Over eight and half hours in a box of eight discs, here Joy Division bassist Peter Hook tells his own story -- and his own meat'n'potatoes version of the band's career -- which is compellingly grim, cold and a catalogue of failures, fights (with the audience, and within their early audience), hopeless recording sessions and mistake after mistake as they joined the punk excitement and, like so... > Read more

He's Possessed by the Devil, That Twat

HAP WORKING THE WORLD by HAP CAMERON

1 Feb 2013  |  1 min read

Told with all the enthusiasm of a man on his third beer at the barbecue, Cameron recounts his free-wheeling globe-trotting adventures after deciding, at 23, to see all seven continents before he was 30. Like a passport-carrying Sam Cash from Barry Crump's stories, Cameron from Nelson offers the kind of backpacker, thumb-out yarn which should have considerable appeal for the Lonely... > Read more

I'M YOUR MAN; THE LIFE OF LEONARD COHEN by SYLVIE SIMMONS

6 Jan 2013  |  1 min read

On the eve of his first tour as a musician in 1970 a nervous Leonard Cohen -- aged 34, an acclaimed poet and novelist itinerant between hometown Montreal, the Greek island of Hydra and New York's Chelsea Hotel – requested a mask be made for him to wear while performing. One of his own face. As biographer Sylvie Simmons – astutely unpicking Cohen's life, lyrics, poems and... > Read more

FARTHER AWAY by JONATHAN FRANZEN

14 Dec 2012  |  2 min read

Although Jonathan Franzen's publishers would be happy to see anything from their massive-selling and award-winning author (The Corrections, Freedom), there might have only been muted applause and very few high-fives in the boardroom when Farther Away was rolled out. It is a shapeless grab bag of recent writing and talks which includes a few book reviews, some digressive think pieces, what... > Read more

BANKSY; THE MAN BEHIND THE WALL by WILL ELSWORTH-JONES

9 Dec 2012  |  4 min read

When, in 2008, Britain's Mail on Sunday identified who it thought to be the anonymous stencil artist Banksy, there were numerous complaints. “Why have you done this? I don't understand,” wrote one disgruntled reader. “You have ruined something special.” As Robin Barton, owner of Bankrobber Gallery which sells Banksy prints, said, “People really don't want... > Read more

J.R.R. TOLKIEN: The Wagner of Middle Earth

28 Nov 2012  |  3 min read

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien wasn't much of a writer -- not in the technical sense of being a stylist anyway. His characters were flat and archetypal, and they often stood for something, rather than just being. Well, that's what some in the literary establishment believe. They also say he drew the maps in his books to compensate for his lack of literary skills. But as with J.K. Rowling... > Read more

1912: THE YEAR THE WORLD DISCOVERED ANTARCTICA by CHRIS TURNEY

9 Nov 2012  |  4 min read

In late September, one of the world's biggest aircraft started ferrying a few hundred scientists and support crew down to Antarctica, once a remote frozen wasteland at the bottom of the planet. These days almost 50 nations – Korea among the most recent – are represented down there, you can explore it on Google maps, and regular visitors include writers, artists,... > Read more

BILLY LYNN'S LONG HALFTIME WALK by BEN FOUNTAIN

11 Sep 2012  |  3 min read

Any thinking American who read Generation Kill, Evan Wright's remarkable account of being an embedded journalist with an advance group of Marines during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, would immediately consign the notion of military heroes to the grave. Here was a modern American army unit, hyped up on testosterone, video game culture and pure caffeine, involved in a shapeless war and... > Read more

EREWHON CALLING; EXPERIMENTAL SOUND IN NEW ZEALAND edited by BRUCE RUSSELL (Audio Foundation//CMR)

3 Sep 2012  |  4 min read

Although New Zealand has a comparatively short history of original and indigenous music (outside of waiata, of course), there has also been a significant tradition of experiment in sound, which in one direction we might date back to Douglas Lilburn's work in the mid-Sixties when he founded Victoria University's electronic studio. From that lineage came the likes of John Rimmer, John... > Read more

Ives

CATCHING THE SUN by TONY PARSONS

11 Aug 2012  |  2 min read

All across the Pacific, South East Asia and in fact anywhere warm, cheap and exotic to Europeans, there are men – and sometimes families – who have washed up and are foundering in places which once beckoned as an escape from their previous lives. But those palm-lined white sand beaches, vibrant marketplaces, cheap drinks and lazy days enjoyed on a holiday can take on darker... > Read more

MUSEUM CURATOR BRIAN GILL INTERVIEWED (2012): Past perfect for the future

4 Aug 2012  |  3 min read

In the 21st century museum of the popular imagination, musty cases and specimens under glass have been replaced by brightly coloured interactive displays, whizz-bang educational sites for youngsters and holograms in place of artifacts. This state-of-the-art museum is noisy and full of life, unlike those ill-lit halls where stooped older people shuffled around, silently peering at fossils... > Read more

EXIT STRATEGIES: GRANTA 118 edited by JOHN FREEMAN

22 Jul 2012  |  2 min read

Although the title phrase here has been appropriated by the corporate world – often as a nod'n'wink euphemism for an obscene and absurdly high contract pay-out – the British literary magazine Granta takes a broader view in this typically interesting, if uneven, collection of 18 new works by established and new writers alike. The most senior is the least of them as 80-year... > Read more

THE NZ BOOK by LUNNON, MACKECHNIE, FITZSIMONS and BECKFORD (FitzBeck)

16 Jul 2012  |  2 min read

One of the writers of this attractive page-turner has already appeared at Elsewhere, but in a very different capacity. Nigel Beckford was one of the prime movers behind the terrific double CD and book Songs from the Bottom of a Hilltop which was one of our Best of Elsewhere 2010 albums. Then more recently I noted he had also been in the group the heretical group the Inhalers when I pulled... > Read more

THE ROLLING STONES; FIFTY YEARS by CHRISTOPHER SANDFORD

5 Jun 2012  |  3 min read

Reading this well paced and page-turning overview of the Rolling Stones' career, lives and finances, the surprise is not that they have survived 50 years, but that they survived 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972 . . . For more than a decade from the mid Sixties the Stones diced with death and self destruction, and yet out of that crucible of chaos at concerts, condemnation, drug busts, deaths... > Read more

THE BARONESS by HANNAH ROTHSCHILD

25 May 2012  |  4 min read

Some patrons of the arts are rewarded with physical legacies: the family name on the wing of a major gallery, a sculpture park, their portraits in public collections . . . Others make do with ephemeral acknowledgement, like Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter whose name is written invisibly in the air by a couple of dozen jazz compositions written for her. The Baroness – aka Nica... > Read more

Round Midnight (1947)

PERLMANN'S SILENCE by PASCAL MERCIER

25 Mar 2012  |  2 min read

Those who are nervous about speaking in public usually have the perfect way out, they simply don't do it. And, for most, the required occasions are mercifully few so the paralysing fear never has to be addressed. But what of those for whom being in the public eye is what they do? What if they are struck with an anxiety attack or stage fright? The more they consider it, the worse the... > Read more

THE NEW 1000 PLACES TO SEE BEFORE YOU DIE by PATRICIA SCHULTZ

9 Mar 2012  |  1 min read  |  1

Any book of lists with a number in the title perhaps deserves some mathematical anaylsis. So first, the numbers. The 2003 original edition of this book sold three million copies and was number one on the New York Times best seller list. That's impressive -- and it spawned a number of spin-offs, not the least being  Travel Channel series and, more recently, an app. But there are... > Read more