tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-102464212024-03-07T18:33:39.960+11:00you cried for nightA place to chat about literature of the world, or Australian literature, writing and publishing, as we choose. (Now at a new space, see below.)genevievehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02895689949182365454noreply@blogger.comBlogger48125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10246421.post-1113212524802235072005-04-11T19:38:00.003+10:002010-09-22T23:52:08.603+10:00It's official. Please pop by. <br />
<a href="http://austlit.typepad.com/cfn">http://austlit.typepad.com/cfn</a><br />
All the posts from this site are archived there, sorry I was too impatient to list comments individually.<br />
The name <span style="font-weight: bold;">(this update in April 2008)</span> has been changed - please change your bookmarks if you have been kind enough to blogroll this space (and I have not emailed you already).<br />
Goodbye little green, grey and red place, you have served me well....(yes, I know the colours have changed. My goodness this is old, isn't it. )genevievehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02895689949182365454noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10246421.post-1112970954244986212005-04-09T00:14:00.000+10:002005-04-09T09:23:20.226+10:00group blogs are GOAnother great offering, this time from a <a href="http://www.lbc.typepad.com/">conglomerate of litbloggers </a>who are not necessarily academics. Sorry, that should read Co-Operative. My fave blogger Mark Sarvas has rounded up all their strength and sweetness into one...umm, the Marvell parody just ran out of juice right there. But you should have a look, it's a useful space which should work very well.<br /><br />Both this blog and <a href="http://www.thevalve.org/">The Valve </a> will provide the interested reader with constant analysis of the phenomenon of litblogging. So I will be pointing you in the direction of a few titbits from time to time, saving myself the task of said analysis, as well as hanging around <a href="http://www.400windmills.com/">400 Windmills</a>, <a href="http://www.chekhovsmistress.com/">Chekhov's Mistress</a>, the Australian blogs listed on the right, and <a href="http://marksarvas.blogs.com/elegvar/">The Elegant Variation</a>.<br /><br />I'm enjoying the travel to work on the train as an excuse to indulge the charming Melburnian habit of reading on the rails ( apparently not very common on public transport in the States, some bloggers claim).<br /><br />Recent reading: Hanif Kureishi's <a href="http://www.readings.com.au/BookWeb/details.cgi?ITEMNO=9780571177523">The Black Album</a>, interspersed with literary mags from the <a href="http://www.writers-centre.org/">Victorian Writers' Centre</a> ( one of which published two articles from weblogs), chunks of Don Quixote and the Phoenix Book of Irish Short Stories 2003 ( okay, I read that one at home in bed like a good Melburnian). And speaking of bed...genevievehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02895689949182365454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10246421.post-1112696015519072352005-04-05T20:08:00.000+10:002005-04-05T20:13:35.520+10:00abandoning the print<a href="http://dangillmor.typepad.com/dan_gillmor_on_grassroots/2005/03/where_the_reade.html">Dan Gillmor's </a>portentousness aside, this is <a href="http://www.carnegie.org/reporter/10/news/index.html">an interesting and substantial piece</a> on the flight to online news sources.genevievehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02895689949182365454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10246421.post-1112695638086101392005-04-05T19:53:00.000+10:002005-04-05T20:07:18.086+10:00Finding a Valve - what would Trilling do?‘Your voice is your own, if you take responsibility for it. This unimpaired prospect of suiting myself holds back concerns that the sheer volume of blogstuff has gotten appetite suppressing… Then there is the worry that compulsively reading 30+ blogs a day has all the hallmarks of mild narcotic addition. And, yes, the fact that the blogosphere has been colonized by all literary and intellectual vices known to man, and a few invented specially for the occasion.’<br /><br />From a lovely new offering, <a href="http://www.thevalve.org/">The Valve</a>, Miriam Burstein of <a href="http://littleprofessor.typepad.com/the_little_professor/">The Little Professor</a> and Dan Green of <a href="http://noggs.typepad.com/the_reading_experience/">The Reading Experience</a> are part of this venture and the first substantial post on offer is written with Trilling’s essay, “The Function of the Little Magazine” very much in mind.<br /><br />I couldn’t help chuckling the first time I read this – I really thought they meant invented voices here, not vices. And plead guilty on all counts. Even if I’m not being paid to speak or play up, <a href="http://scribblersdelight.blogspot.com/">Fran</a>.genevievehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02895689949182365454noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10246421.post-1112270653377239722005-03-31T21:30:00.000+10:002005-04-01T11:45:27.133+10:00getting around the trapsBlogrolled again - this time at <a href="http://www.mountainmurmurs.com/">Mountain Murmurs </a>and <a href="http://templatedata.typepad.com/stack/">Stack</a>.<br />Mountain Murmurs is one of those lovely creations developed by yet another cleversocks who knows how to install <a href="http://wordpress.org/">Wordpress</a>. Great design, Ron...There seem to be quite a few Wordpress devotees in Australia - Kent at <a href="http://www.ummm.net/dockofthebay/">Dock of the Bay </a>is another.<br />Stack is a friendly spot for booklovers and those of you already reading overseas literature blogs. Georgina hails from NSW but despite that! we are pretty much kindred spirits. This post is pretty funny - <a href="http://templatedata.typepad.com/stack/2005/03/the_horror.html">shades of Black Books.</a>genevievehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02895689949182365454noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10246421.post-1111887801956166932005-03-27T11:39:00.000+10:002005-04-03T00:45:26.530+10:00Writers and BlogsLibrarians love to compile search logs, and love to develope little silvery snail trails across the Web of how they did this and that.<br />And these tools are terrific as long as they fulfil the following criteria:<br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="color:#993300;"><strong>The Right Tool ( relevance, topicality, ability to be updated)<br />The Visible ( find it!) Tool</strong></span><br /></span>I intend to write a log of the blogging trip and am finding that the trap with this blog as journal/repository is that it can be all things at once – and nothing. I will write a chat piece about tools, rather than write the serious log I need to compile on this blogging trip so I can deliver materials at some time in the future to writers who might (conceivably!) be interested.<br /><br />Inner voice says – <span style="font-family:arial;color:#009900;">but you will write the log. Put it on the list. And spend some time away from the blog. (Inner voice speaks in purest green, Arial.)</span><br /><br />I do wonder, however, if I would write about this at all if I didn’t have a blog – which begs the question of what kind of person blogs in the first place.<br /><br />Writers of fiction who have not worked, for example, as journalists or researchers, or in public relations, might find the sometimes feverish quality of this deeply hyperlinked discourse unsettling. I’m already finding it works well as a writing exercise – but what am I producing? What am I opening up when I open my Bloglines subs and start webhopping? Am I a locust? A scavenger?<br /><br />Librarians are big on purpose and direction because if they have any cataloguing experience at all, they are ripping into print and online materials quickly every time they open something, trying to determine where relevant subject matter is and what their users will do with it.<br /><br />I’ve enjoyed this over the past four years as I study and enter the profession, but suspect it detracts from the meditative qualities prized by writers I enjoy – Wordsworth, Marvell, George Herbert, most of the high modernists, people like Shirley Hazzard and W.G. Sebald, Carson McCullers, Randolph Stow, Tobias Wolff…<br /><br />I somehow suspect the writer’s mind might work differently, though it could simply be me feeling Romantic.<br /><br />What could fiction lose? if all writers blog?<br /><br />How many Cantos does the world need after all?<br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;color:#333333;"><em>Hang it all, Browning, perhaps it is time to read Sordello.</em></span><br /><em><span style="color:#333333;"></span></em>genevievehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02895689949182365454noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10246421.post-1111716234979134992005-03-25T12:49:00.000+11:002005-03-26T18:12:40.860+11:00B for Blood (and beginning a weblog research collection)Blood, Rebecca. "Hammer, nail: how blogging software reshaped the online community", <em>Communications of the ACM.</em> December 2004: <a href="http://www.rebeccablood.net/essays/blog_software.html">Rebecca's Pocket </a>18 January 2005.<br />Blood, Rebecca."Ten tips for a better weblog", <a href="http://www.rebeccablood.net/essays/ten_tips.html">Rebecca's Pocket.</a> 22 March 2003.<br />Blood, Rebecca. <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/weblogs/story/0,14024,1108306,00.html">"The revolution should not be eulogised." </a>( this citation can wait, I've got a date with Typepad this Easter).<br />Blood, Rebecca. "There is a weblog in your future." <a href="http://www.blogger.com/knowledge/2004/05/there-is-blog-in-your-future.pyra">Blogger Knowledge Base.</a><br /><br />And D for Dan of course - <a href="http://noggs.typepad.com/the_reading_experience/2005/03/adam_kotsko_has.html">check out this discussion</a>. Topical, <a href="http://noggs.typepad.com/the_reading_experience/">this whole blog </a>will be in my collection.<br />Dan Green's <a href="http://noggs.typepad.com/the_reading_experience/2004/01/statement_of_pu.html">Statement of Purpose</a> will be filed away under Litblog Research.genevievehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02895689949182365454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10246421.post-1111509780329131252005-03-23T03:21:00.000+11:002005-03-25T13:12:55.250+11:00Pluck out its eyes, prioritise...If I can't get Typepad up by the end of the Easter break, I may well be putting this blog on the backburner for a few months. There will be a weekly update, but I have recently been employed! and have a lot of background management to orchestrate.<br /><br />While I'm incredibly grateful to the people who have given me my break into the workforce after twenty two years at home - there are some wonderful people out there, non? - it is going to take some ingenuity, and occasionally some of my husband's carer leave, to juggle all this.<br /><br />So this late- night ramble is in the form of online planning for the categories that may never happen but would be included on any future incarnation of CFN:<br />Litblog reviews<br />-Media (print, online)<br />-Original reviews by yours truly - a quick reference guide for the locals (and anyone else who is<br />interested in an outsider's opinion!)<br />Literature<br />Online writing resources<br />Journalism<br />Technology<br />History<br />Blogospherica - commentary ( mine and others) on where blogging is going in its various incarnations<br />- small section on Blogging Tools, resources if I find some stuff worth saving<br />If my employment does not resume again after its introductory period of three months ( yep, they're using up some funding on training new casuals), then these things may yet come to pass... In the meantime this corner is going to be less assiduously manned.genevievehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02895689949182365454noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10246421.post-1111508469186724052005-03-23T03:02:00.002+11:002009-03-24T20:26:59.729+11:00the cowardly lionessDan Gillmor reports on some interesting comments from Tina Brown, the powerful (ex?) magazine editor, on the role of bloggers. This ain't nice folks. <a href="http://dangillmor.typepad.com/dan_gillmor_on_grassroots/2005/03/hint_its_hyperb.html">It is not necessary to bandy terms like Stasi around </a>- stopping just short of KGB or Gestapo, is she? I thought they were all pretty much the same in my versions of history.<br /><br />I don't think I'll ever get used to female journos who say things like this about other women - this pap is directed at Condoleeza Rice, whose politics I oppose, but whose rise I am impressed by in my misguided li'l hippy heart<br />(okay, I know, I'm discriminating against powerful white women here ):<br /><blockquote><p><span style="font-size:85%;">Condi seems to have shed gender, shed race, shed the need for any visible emotional life. Her hobbies -- ice skating, chamber music -- are intellectually pristine and demurely glamorous. As national security adviser in the Church Lady White House, she was the Policy Nun. As secretary of state and queen of Foggy Bottom, she shows signs of becoming the Bushies' Emma Peel.</span></p><span style="font-size:85%;"><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></blockquote></span><p>I take exception to this nonsense here- <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42269-2005Mar16.html">it really is a lightweight piece </a>( Washington Post) with an aim to skewering bloggers on the pointy end of a media backlash:</p><p><span style="font-size:85%;">We are in the Eggshell Era, in which everyone has to tiptoe around because there's a world of busybodies out there who are being paid to catch you out -- and a public that is slowly being trained to accept a culture of finks. </span></p><p>Slowly? Who the hell is she talking to here? Not the public, that's for sure. Like the print and broadcast media haven't been doing this for at least fifty years already? QUE??</p><p>And the last para is too silly really. If Ms. Brown doesn't want people to talk about her, but wants the freedom to print anything she feels like, then surely she is 'shedding' a few fundamentals herself.</p></blockquote>genevievehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02895689949182365454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10246421.post-1111323184406398652005-03-20T23:51:00.003+11:002009-03-24T20:27:17.833+11:00we're not going on a bear-hunt again<a href="http://www.yankeepotroast.org/archives/2005/03/ars_short_stori_1.html">This is quite humorous</a>.genevievehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02895689949182365454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10246421.post-1111298374238232782005-03-20T16:57:00.002+11:002009-03-24T20:27:42.747+11:00past the point of peer review...The <a href="http://www.magazine.org/Editorial/National_Magazine_Awards/Winners_and_Finalists/">National Magazine Awards </a>(US) have a category for General Excellence Online - it includes weblogs (though none have been nominated this year). Link via Bookslut.genevievehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02895689949182365454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10246421.post-1111297301469192752005-03-20T16:40:00.000+11:002005-03-20T16:41:41.470+11:00free and for nothing<a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/contents.php">The contents table of the London Review of Books</a>. Articles available online at this time appear in red. I’m not sure how much goes into the archive so that is worth a look too. I did check the subscription for this once and it is pretty expensive – a pleb like myself will have to go to the State Library ( or maybe the Carlton or City Library ) to photocopy other interesting titbits.<br /><br />I decided to blog this because one of the online pieces for March 17 is called “Some of them can read” and is a review of a book on rats, specifically those in the city of New York. ( Parochial, non?)<br /><br />One of the most chilling articles I have ever read in Granta magazine was about the rats Werner Herzog employed for his remake of the silent classic Nosferatu. Simply entitled ‘Rats’, in Granta 86: Film. (Unfortunately not online –get thee to a good library, go.) The sad thing is that it is probably not the worst Werner Herzog story out there either…genevievehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02895689949182365454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10246421.post-1111273709385342092005-03-20T09:53:00.000+11:002005-03-20T10:08:29.386+11:00reading blogsLooks like the <a href="http://gaddis-drinking-club.blogspot.com/">Gaddis Drinking Club</a> is pretty much wrapped up. Bud Parr and I have attempted to summarise the last 350 pp. for the masses. Perhaps we are both people who prefer our virtual objects in a format approaching completion? that's a compulsion, isn't it. If only I felt as strongly about my cupboards - and garden...<br /><br />One of the top US bloggers, with one of the most beautifully designed blogs you will see anywhere at <a href="http://www.chekhovsmistress.com/">Chekhov's Mistress</a>, Bud has a new project under way, still an enormous book but much better known. Definitely not an impossible dream...!! <a href="http://www.400windmills.com/">Check it out</a>.genevievehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02895689949182365454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10246421.post-1111146196312457522005-03-18T22:19:00.000+11:002005-03-18T22:49:45.673+11:00poets' cornerWhile travelling courtesy of the Guardian's Picks to the <a href="http://www.lnreview.co.uk/books/diary/">London News Review Diary</a>, I found <a href="http://www.lnreview.co.uk/books/diary/004577.php">some comments and links </a>to Don Paterson's T.S. Eliot Lecture of 2004. Not terribly easy to find <a href="http://www.poetrylibrary.org.uk/news/poetryscene/?id=20">the whole text</a>, but I managed with the help of the Google fairy.<br />Notice how it is <a href="http://www.poetrylibrary.org.uk/news/poetryscene/">buried deep in the Poetry Library site </a>, just in case you were looking for it or something?? Talk about the invisible Web. As it qualifies as “news” it might not stay there for long.<br /><br />Paterson says some interesting, if occasionally conservative things; dismisses Pinter’s attempts at a poem on Iraq with aplomb; gets very hippy and dreamy in the middle, with a quite peculiar parenthetical remark about marsupials, and is occasionally blistering;<br /><br /><blockquote></blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">'Of course we should meet poets at least half-way – the poem, in fact, demands the complicity of the reader in its own creation; however the amount of running certain readers are making in the relationship should be a matter of mortal embarrassment to them.'</span><br /><br />And is sometimes quite pellucid, not unlike his Indian friend who said to him, ‘in this country you spend a lot of time trying to connect things that are already connected.’<br />Unfortunately the whole thing is very light on examples and therefore confined to generalisations. That’s just what <em>I</em> think...And I'm going to add poet Michael Donaghy to the TBR list, and keep an eye on the London News Diary, which the Guardian suggests is akin to ' taking a peek inside the mind of your oddest, funniest friend'. We shall see...genevievehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02895689949182365454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10246421.post-1111144694020486742005-03-18T21:59:00.000+11:002005-03-18T22:46:42.543+11:00COR this is good.<a href="http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2005/03/08/nlsn_blg.html">Digby send me an email</a>… Why a senior publisher is not interested in publishing books by major journalists who are underrepresented in the blogosphere. From PressThink, the blog of New York journalism academic, Jay Rosen.<br />There are some very telling points made about the power of blogs in this post by Eric Nelson, a senior editor in current affairs and history at Wiley and Sons:<br /><br /><blockquote></blockquote>'...<span style="font-size:85%;">if absolutely no one is blogging your stuff, no one’s reading it in the paper either</span>.'<br /><br />Towards the end he distinguishes the experienced journo from the garden variety blogger, but his sympathies seem to lie with the blogosphere:<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">'The truth is most bloggers are editors, picking the best bits of the web to show their readers; they are not reporters or architects of elegant policy arguments. The ones that are reporters and architects, usually have a pretty good non-digital resume to back it up.'<br /></span><br />All good stuff, but what spoke most eloquently to me was the first comment to this post, about the ordinary blogger ( presumably by an 'ordinary' blogger):<br /><br /><br /><blockquote></blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">'We are part of the private, recent, non-geek, non-old-boy bloggers, with insignificant stats, who think aloud in public, becoming a part of varied conversations, adding a nano-gram to consensus or controversy on certain subjects, and occasionally achieving a mini-scoop by virtue of observation or privileged access in our own circle.<br />When in retrospect blogs are evaluated, we believe it will be this kind of ordinary educated citizens' distributed intelligence with its impact on the market and the polity, including the expressive content of millions who also read the expression of others, that will have rumbled the tectonic foundation of our common life.'</span><br /><br />Rumble on. We may feel anxious about <a href="http://dox.media2.org/barista/archives/001825.html">legislative attempts </a>to keep the top bloggers' identities out in the open, but they are 'one and we are many, and from all the lands on earth we come.'genevievehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02895689949182365454noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10246421.post-1111023905652607882005-03-17T12:32:00.000+11:002005-03-17T12:45:05.653+11:00the shrinking lifeArrrrgh.<br />Car - oil all over the road in front of the Cop Shop ( as we call them down here). Mercifully the cops took no notice. They are gentlemen at Nunawading, I should have asked them to drive us all home.<br /><br />Computer - re-imaged by Yours Truly ce matin. Quelle fookin' blague. ( that's franglais for what a fucking joke).<br /><br />(Never mind what loathsome things I had to do with Safe Mode and floppy discs to save some precious fragments to shore against my ruins. It's often slow things that slowly bring me unravelled.<br />I can't ever remember computers being that slow, but they were, people! They were, and we sat there marvelling at how clever they were! How silly were we?)<br /><br />Washing machine - new! wow. Technostress is setting in. When will Typepad and I be united?<br /><br />Seriously, in 20 years of driving ( four cars, too) I have <em>never</em> seen oil leak like that.<br />To add insult to injury, I got home with my eldest son to discover that the young 'uns ( 18, 16) had ordered pizza from the slowest store they possibly could - but hey, that's me suffering 21st Century Stress. Thank God for our new wine cellar in the laundry, left over from the 50th. Next to my new washing machine. Three cheers for Pollyanna, I have my crutches.<br />( As long as my autistic son doesn't throw out my wine when I am not looking - he is <em>very</em> tidy right now and got rid of two whole glasses last week).genevievehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02895689949182365454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10246421.post-1110627310351993642005-03-12T22:25:00.000+11:002005-03-12T22:50:40.386+11:00the time has come, a fact's a factNow is the time ( that's right, I had a sleep-in and I'm reading the paper in bed), to start the drafts for the Blog Log. Wouldn’t be a librarian’s Techie Day Out without a log, I'm afraid.<br />( Is what librarians do all the time Mrs. Fawlty – Actually an incredibly useful idea once you’ve learned how to file your log away in a place where you will find it again. Aaah, library school!)<br /><br />I have noted these kinds of musings scattered across the blogs I read – they remind me of the old song from Paint Your Wagon,<br />"where are we going, I don't know,<br />when will we get there, I ain't certain,<br />All I know is I am on my way..."<br /><br />I’d like my Blog Log category to be a neat little parcel of similarly themed, Quo Vadis pieces. If anyone knows the Latin for ‘How did I get here’ I’d be very happy to hear from them.<br /><br />David Tiley of <a href="http://dox.media2.org/barista/">Barista</a> left a comment here the other day about litblog workshopping and what the content might involve – I think he has answered the question as well, it is about where it might go next. Sometimes. It might also be about 'the beauty of the way, and the kindness of the wayfarers" (apologies there Sam B.), as it is with most blogging.<br />Also for writers there might be some use in encouragement to see what tech tools like blogs have to offer before going to the trouble to sit clicking through several registrations and attendant fol-de-rols. We don’t have all day, do we? To play with Typepad and Mozilla, Bloglines and Feedster, to find out who Rebecca was and what she keeps in her pocket.<br /><br />Let's face it, it takes time away from producing content which is publishable ( unlike this unstructured rant). So if someone will put up a powerpoint presentation with a few links in it to take away, why not roll up? ( Please don't worry, the next post in this series will be ruthlessly bulletpointed.)<br /><br />David also mentioned he has organised a 'loose' gathering at Spleen, Tuesday 15 March from 6.30 onwards, at the top end of Bourke Street. All Melbourne bloggers and friends invited, I think - <a href="http://dox.media2.org/barista/archives/001809.html">check it out</a>.genevievehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02895689949182365454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10246421.post-1110611950654199702005-03-12T17:51:00.000+11:002005-03-12T22:22:03.016+11:00a nose for these thingsA compelling review by Brenda Niall appeared in <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/books/">The Age </a>today ( sorry, registration <em>is</em> required for this one already). I will get this book, <em><a href="http://www.readings.com.au/BookWeb/details.cgi?ITEMNO=9780701177591">Body Parts: Essays on Life Writing</a></em>, after I’ve got hold of Sebald's <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1400062292/qid=1110610438/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/104-1594257-2003951"><em>Campo</em></a><em> </em><a href="http://www.readings.com.au/BookWeb/details.cgi?ITEMNO=9780241142776"><em>Santo</em> </a>and there will be much rejoicing ( as was remarked when Robin’s minstrels were eaten).<br />This is Lee's second book to include material on Woolf ( this one appears in the Amazon catalogue as <em>Virginia Woolf's Nose: Essays on Biography</em>) and she apparently has ' sharp things to say' about the film <em>The Hours.</em> Niall says,<br /><blockquote></blockquote>As the reflections of a professional biographer, Body Parts will have special interest for anyone who attempts that craft. Yet it has an unexpected breadth of appeal...the occupational risks of biography, which include narcissism and possessiveness, are everyday hazards in human relationships. Among many wonderful stories about the living and the dead, a few are disappointing...it is a pity Graham McInnes' portrait of his mother Angela Thirkell in The Road to Gundagai was not taken into account in Lee's chapter on the snobbish world of Thirkell's novels. Thirkell's brief exile in Melbourne brought out the worst in her. "Mother was awful," McInnes wrote, "but I loved her."<br /><em><br /></em>Brenda Niall has written <a href="http://www.readings.com.au/BookWeb/search.cgi?START=0&STYPE=KW&STEXT=Brenda+Niall&I1.x=39&I1.y=12">several bios </a>of Australian writers and artists, and I’ve yet to digest her extended treatment of Martin Boyd’s family, <em>The Boyds</em>. Dipping into it quickly I did find much I had already read in her book about Martin himself.<br />(For State-siders reading this, Martin Boyd was a lively and urbane recreator of late nineteenth century Melbourne life in his novels, the most famous being the four books known as the Langton Quartet. I adore all of them. More on <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0140069062/qid=1110610760/sr=1-4/ref=sr_1_4/104-1594257-2003951?v=glance&s=books"><em>A Difficult Young Man</em></a><em> </em>another time.<br />By the way, I didn't know Amazon provided citations via email.)<br /><br />Visitors from <a href="http://blusterhead.blogspot.com/">Blusterhead</a>, on the other hand, are highly likely to know exactly who Martin was and how famous <a href="http://www.cultureandrecreation.gov.au/articles/arthurboyd/">his nephew Arthur</a> and other family members are in Australia. One of my regrets ( among several, not an extensive list) is that I did not visit <a href="http://www.bundanon.com.au/">Bundanon</a> before Arthur died a few years back. Imagine seeing Australia’s greatest living painter at work, as he was wont to do for visitors... and yours truly missed the opportunity.genevievehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02895689949182365454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10246421.post-1110536910985856652005-03-11T21:27:00.000+11:002005-03-11T21:28:30.986+11:00blogclogSome problems with comments today... only since the morning (Eastern Australia time 12 pm).<br />Let's see what happens tomorrow.genevievehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02895689949182365454noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10246421.post-1110339068161531902005-03-09T14:25:00.000+11:002005-03-09T14:56:18.573+11:00the Guardian's quick picksIf you can’t wait for me to dig up the Guardian list, where Mark Sarvas was damned with faint praise ( bastards!), <a href="http://books.guardian.co.uk/links/areas_of_interest/general/links/0,6135,1406190,00.html">here it is</a>.<br />On revisiting this list I realise I haven’t looked at a lot of these other than <a href="http://www.bookslut.com/blog/">Bookslut</a> and <a href="http://marksarvas.blogs.com/elegvar/">TEV</a> – the rest may well be English. Je ne sais pas. The time may well have come for a blog that reviews litblogs. Why leave it to the newspapers?genevievehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02895689949182365454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10246421.post-1110338752878691812005-03-09T14:21:00.000+11:002005-03-09T14:45:31.383+11:00what book blogs can do?Have a look at <a href="http://noggs.typepad.com/the_reading_experience/2005/03/i_don_think_ive.html">this discussion </a>on Dan Green’s excellent blog, <a href="http://noggs.typepad.com/the_reading_experience/">The Reading Experience</a>. The number of extant articles on litblogging in the US and UK is growing slowly, I’ll file a post soon which references to a few (and maybe stick some permanently in the sidebar).<br /><a href="http://www.triangle.com/books/zane/story/2118926p-8499194c.html">The article</a> mentioned by Green is by J.Peder Zane: coming from a North Carolina publication, News Observer, puts it pretty much in the lightweight category, but nonetheless it triggered responses from some of <a href="http://esposito.typepad.com/con_read/">my favourite people </a>( now more accessible since I subscribed to Bloglines). The discussion is worth a look, and demonstrates clearly to me that the charm of this kind of ‘smart cocktail party’, as Zane rather crankily puts it, is the speed with which a throwaway phrase can telescope out into a more thorough digestion of a question via the humble hyperlink.<br />Thinking out loud? rather than learned conversation? Perhaps, but it beats free to air TV hands down. (You may care to check out Dan's posts on <a href="http://noggs.typepad.com/the_reading_experience/2005/03/after_listening.html">Robert McCrum </a>and <a href="http://noggs.typepad.com/the_reading_experience/2005/03/it_is_perhaps_t.html">Richard Curtis </a>while you're there.)genevievehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02895689949182365454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10246421.post-1110261229020879462005-03-08T16:53:00.000+11:002005-03-08T17:01:31.556+11:00oz poetry newsA <a href="http://versemag.blogspot.com/2005/03/new-review-of-andrew-sant.html">review</a> of the most recent collection of Andrew Sant's poetry, Tremors, is posted over at Verse. (Thanks to Ivy at <a href="http://northline.blogspot.com/">North of the latte line </a>for the link.)genevievehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02895689949182365454noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10246421.post-1109830558868854542005-03-03T17:03:00.000+11:002005-03-03T17:15:58.870+11:00what can writers do for bloggingMark Sarvas ( he of <a href="http://marksarvas.blogs.com/elegvar/">TEV</a> fame) has taken the plunge and <a href="http://marksarvas.blogs.com/elegvar/2005/03/an_idea_whose_t.html">networked with the L.A. chapter of PEN</a> to float the idea of a litblogging workshop for authors. I am a tad surprised as I thought the American scene was full of blogging writers - but it appears this is 'an idea whose time has come'.<br />Check out also the article he links to regarding <a href="http://www.bksp.org/RichardCurtis3.html">an agent's fearful view of litblogging </a>- quite alarmist, worthy of the most timid of '80s librarians. (No more books! No more publishers! he even says, no more gatekeepers...!!)<br /><br />On our patch, <a href="http://www.expressmedia.org.au/">Express Media</a>, in conjunction with the <a href="http://www.writers-centre.org/">Victorian Writers' Centre</a>, are having an <a href="http://www.expressmedia.org.au/events.html#ewf">Emerging Writers' Festival </a>in May which I intend to check out with a view to finding out more about where young writers see blogging going in this country. It is reasonable at this point to assume they will have a stronger interest than older writers - or is it? Perhaps there'll be blogging workshops at every main writing festival in 2006...The wave approaches, when and where will it break, I wonder?genevievehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02895689949182365454noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10246421.post-1109761749923315412005-03-02T21:58:00.000+11:002005-03-02T22:09:09.926+11:00read all about itThese people are still running their <a href="http://www.themorningnews.org/tob/">Tournament Of Books </a>: the final round sees The Plot Against America shaping up against Cloud Atlas, with a stellar list of litbloggers commenting on the stoush. Also there's an interview with <a href="http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/personalities/birnbaum_v_robert_mccrum.php">Robert McCrum,</a> literary editor at The Guardian and the author of a new bio on P.G. Wodehouse. The interviewer, Robert Birnbaum, works out of Boston and has also <a href="http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/robert_birnbaum/">interviewed</a> Louis de Bernieres, Cynthia Ozick, Jonathan Lethem and Peter Carey, among many others. The interviews archive is worth a look, as is the whole site.genevievehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02895689949182365454noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10246421.post-1109555998706291272005-02-28T12:31:00.000+11:002005-02-28T13:09:46.186+11:00100 bloggers marching along, 100 bloggers singing a song<a href="http://jstrande.typepad.com/100bloggers/"><span style="color:#33cc00;">Jon Strande’s 100 Bloggers book</span> </a>should be out in April or May. The project began, as I’ve noted in an earlier post, in December 2004 and I wanted today to quote extensively from some of the contributors’ responses to Jon’s inquiry,<br /><br />1.) What does 100 bloggers mean to you?<br />2.) How are you explaining it to others?<br /><br />The comments in full appear <span style="color:#33cc00;"><a href="http://jstrande.typepad.com/100bloggers/2005/02/midstream_gut_c.html">here.</a></span><br /><br /><span style="color:#33cc00;"><span style="color:#000000;">We'll start with the comments of</span> <a href="http://brandautopsy.typepad.com/">John Moore </a></span><span style="color:#000000;">from Brand Autopsy:</span><br /><blockquote></blockquote><br /><span style="color:#336666;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-size:100%;">The purpose of the 100 Bloggers project is to showcase the connectedness of blogging and bloggers and to highlight the power of a networked conversation.</span> </span><br /></span><br /><a href="http://sandhill.typepad.com/"><span style="color:#33cc00;">Frank Paynter</span> </a>of Sandhill Trek wrote:<br /><blockquote></blockquote><br /><span style="color:#336666;">100 BLOGGERS is for me an opportunity to contribute a few tiles to a mosaic that will, I hope, when all have contributed reveal a picture of something new, broad, different that is happening in the world of arts and letters - culture and commerce.<br /></span><a title="http://sandhill.typepad.com" href="http://sandhill.typepad.com/" target="_blank"><span style="color:#0000ff;"></span></a><br /><a href="http://slackermanager.com/"><span style="color:#33cc00;"></span><span style="color:#33cc00;">Brenda</span></a><span style="color:#33cc00;">n</span> <span style="color:#000000;">of Slackermanager </span>wrote:<br /><blockquote></blockquote><span style="color:#336666;">I've been describing it to others simply as a book that has 100 different perspectives on why blogs are important and why the authors are writing. What I haven't really thought about until now is that it seems the majority of writers are business bloggers to some degree. Hmmm. As to the first question, I'm just curious to read the responses everyone gives. Unrelated note: it would be really nice to have an OPML file of all 100 feeds. The book could reference the file and readers could subscribe to all 100 at once.<br /></span><br /><a href="http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/"><span style="color:#33cc00;">Dave Pollard’s</span> </a>comments are not representative of the content providers as a whole but throw some light on the kind of perspective sometimes taken in business blogging, one which interests me because of the time I spent mooching around the Worthwhile.com blog before the magazine launch.( That’s right, a PR blog).<br /><blockquote></blockquote><br /><span style="color:#336666;">I'm very focused on the CUSTOMER. What 100Bloggers means to me is an opportunity to open up a new world of writing and connection to people with a literary bent who are now only participating as readers. I'd like to see the outcome of the book being 1,000,000NewBloggers. That's why I think it's so essential that we each convey clearly WHY we blog in our chapters -- it's more important than the rest of the content in the book, and that Chapter One be a SYNOPSIS of those reasons. Then the last chapter tells them HOW to blog. I'd love to see each blog that starts because of our book put a little logo on their blog to acknowledge us as their inspiration, and virally market the book at the same time.</span><br /><br />One of my favourites, <span style="color:#33cc00;"><a href="http://www.jorydesjardins.com/">Jory Desjardins</a></span>, had this to say:<br /><blockquote></blockquote><br /><span style="color:#336666;">To me 100 Bloggers is an introduction for those who are exposed only to traditional media to blog content. They are used to reading ideas diluted by editors' concerns for advertisers, editorial guidelines, etc. They assume that other forms of media are dishing out the best there is to offer because they pick and choose what that content will be. In fact, the best and most innovative "stuff" is coming from blogs, but blogs are hard to vector. You need to enter into the conversation and become a part of the blogosphere, typically, before you know what blogs appeal to you. We're cutting through that and offering up peer-reviewed work. I don't even think book editors "get" what's the best on the Web--they read USA Today to get a sense of what's out there rather than really dig for content. We're saving the public the trouble.<br /></span><br /><span style="color:#33cc00;"><a href="http://www.agelessmarketing.com/">At least one commenter</a></span> , David Wolfe, has noted the similarity between blogging and letter-writing:<br /><blockquote></blockquote><span style="color:#336666;">Blogging has restored the pre-20th century practice of people routinely communicating informally with each other through the written word. The main difference is, bloggers can speak to an audience of many because of the distribitive nature of the Internet.100 Bloggers is a show and tell exposition that demonstrates the professional and personal benefits of blogging.<br /></span><br /><a href="http://www.chriscorrigan.com/parkinglot/"><span style="color:#33cc00;">Chris Corrigan</span> </a>announces that new voices will be heard in this book:<br /><blockquote></blockquote><br /><span style="color:#336666;">I've been telling others that the book will be an exploration of voice, and that people will see how the medium of blogging is being used by voices to give rise to meaning across cultures and continents. I've also been saying that these bloggers are not the A-list bloggers we have heard from before: instead, the bloggers in this book are mostly newer voices coming at blogging from a variety of perspectives.<br /></span><br />And finally <a href="http://www.splatt.com.au/blog/"><span style="color:#33cc00;">Mick Stanic</span> </a>of SplaTT throws down a gauntlet to those outside the blogosphere:<br /><blockquote></blockquote><br /><span style="color:#336666;">How do explain the book to others? As a great way to get the perspective of 100 amazing and intelligent people on the power of blogs. You don’t have to listen to the lone voices like me…but at some stage, you are going to have to listen to the combined voices of all of us.<br /></span><p>In the political arena, it seems to be speed that gives blogs a voice; in the literary scene, the voices are myriad and often heard but not commented on, like a quiet wave gathering strength in the background; so what impact will a book have on business, marketing and general blogging? What if it has no impact at all? How will it be marketed? ( I'm not crazy about Pollard's suggestion myself - it's certainly viral, but is it marketing?) All questions that need to be asked.</p>genevievehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02895689949182365454noreply@blogger.com0