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Keywords: Ulysses

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Nam Le's 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem

    • Peter Craven
    • 05 April 2024
    1 Comment

    Nam Le is one of the strangest writers in the history of Australian literature and is also one of the most incandescently brilliant — which is very weird if you bear in mind that his primary claim to legendary status is a book of short fiction published in 2008. With 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem, Le returns with a new work that encapsulates the brilliance and complexity that fans and critics have come to expect.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Rejoicing in Joyce

    • Juliette Hughes
    • 09 August 2023
    9 Comments

    Navigating the labyrinthine world of James Joyce is a lifelong pursuit for some, and for Frances Devlin-Glass, it's a calling. From a chance encounter at a Bloomsday celebration to yearly seminars, her passion for Joyce has become a beacon for those eager to explore. But what is it about Joyce, and the global celebration of his work, that keeps readers coming back?

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The disquieting lessons of Ian McEwan

    • Peter Craven
    • 14 June 2023

    Ian McEwan's Lessons marked a sharp twist in a five-decade literary career, and presents an opportunity to reflect on his expansive body of work. The one-time literary rogue and Booker laureate now stands as the unquestioned doyen of modern English fiction, his audacious work perpetually navigating undercurrents of unease.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The book corner: An Odyssey

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 29 July 2022
    2 Comments

    Daniel Mendelsohn lectures in classics at Bard College, a liberal arts institution in New York State. His retired father, aged 81 in 2011, regrets gaps in his own education, and asks to sit in on his son’s course of seminars on Homer’s The Odyssey. Professor Mendelsohn agrees, and Jay Mendelsohn joins a class of 18-19 year-olds. Later, father and son go on a cruise that retraces The Odyssey where they discover: is home a physical place, or something you carry around with you or within you? 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Betting on the future of Australia’s gambling addiction

    • Frank Hurley
    • 24 February 2022
    1 Comment

    Gambling is now a core national industry providing significant employment, profit for private providers and revenue for governments. All good but, as with every form of industry, there are ‘externalities’. In the case of the gambling industry, it is the personal and social costs of ‘problem’ or ‘addicted’ gamblers that must be taken into account. 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Odysseus' guide to life

    • Peter Gebhardt
    • 26 August 2019
    3 Comments

    He may be proud, even arrogant, but he's fun. With Odysseus you read yourself; his company is exciting and revealing, so much so that his homecoming is everyone's domesticity.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    On first reading Boochani on Manus

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 07 May 2019
    10 Comments

    No Friend But the Mountains deservedly won an Australian prize but was considered ineligible for others because the writer was not Australian. The book itself mocks that exclusion. Boochani's years on Manus Island branded him as Australian in the same way African slaves became American by the brand American owners burned on to them.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Christmas puns, fun intended

    • Barry Breen
    • 18 December 2013
    11 Comments

    Santa walks into a bar and the barman says: Sorry, we're claused. If sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, then punning must have a reputation almost as undesirable. A joke that can be greeted only with a groan can hardly be a real joke now, can it? But punning has a rich history. It graces the pages of the greatest of writers. And when it comes to puns, subeditors responsible for article headings believe themselves to be a race apart.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    War fires should be left to smoulder

    • David Stephens
    • 11 November 2013
    12 Comments

    Remembrance Day has always been for Australians a quieter affair than Anzac Day, particularly as Anzac Day in recent years has taken on a brassy, bragging style. The historian Ken Inglis described Anzac as Australia's civil religion. Although we were the first country anywhere to come together under a national constitution after a mass popular vote, we downplay Federation and venerate instead a failed military campaign in Turkey in 1915.

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  • RELIGION

    'Jesuit' James Joyce's Church challenge

    • Philip Harvey
    • 13 June 2012
    24 Comments

    One character sings a risqué satire called 'The Ballad of Joking Jesus'. Another wanders into a church and misinterprets the liturgy to comic effect. The puritanical Catholic hierarchy were offended, but Joyce's seemingly anti-religious novels would not exist in their final form were it not for his Jesuit education.

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  • RELIGION

    King James Bible a masterpiece but not an idol

    • Philip Harvey
    • 01 February 2011
    29 Comments

    2011 is the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible. It will be said that the King James is the soul of our language and that it shares pre-eminence with the Bard. But all of this talk will be at odds with the actual purpose for which it was created.

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  • RELIGION

    Pieces of Terry

    • David Bunn
    • 01 September 2008
    2 Comments

    Terry told us he had advanced cancer of the prostate and was hoping to reach October. He was interested in joining the book group, which had three volumes of Proust to go. It seemed like it would be a close run thing.

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