Australia’s elite literary Mafia:

Posted on April 6, 2012 by KG

‘Exactly what is this prize meant to do?’

This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

41 Responses to Australia’s elite literary Mafia:

  1. WebWrat says:
    April 6, 2012 at 07:36

    ILSMTTRDML = I laughed so much the tears ran down my leg!
    Bloody good cartoons about Jooolia and Co.

    http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=295601700493995&set=a.237011506353015.72838.236991276355038&type=1&permPage=1

  2. Cadwallader says:
    April 6, 2012 at 10:05

    Literary awards are frequently nothing more than masturbatory plaudits for the otherwise unemployable. In 1985 a terrible pile of dross called “The Bone People” was praised by a few (very few) literary “experts” and it got a number of awards. In 2001 it was identified, by yet more “experts” as the weakest winner of a Booker Prize in the past 30 years. Never mind: In NZ it was valued for being culturally aware and sensitive. (aka Bullshit!)

    • KG says:
      April 6, 2012 at 10:43

      About sums up the whole circle-jerk, Cad. I find these people despicable–leeching off the productive to feed their imagined intellectual superiority. A parasite is a parasite, no matter how it’s dressed up.

  3. oswald bastable says:
    April 6, 2012 at 11:19

    I’m in absolutely NO danger of winning an award! :mrgreen:

    • KG says:
      April 6, 2012 at 11:27

      Which is entirely to your credit, Os. :lol: How the hell do you manage write your books without dipping into the taxpayer’s pocket, eh?

  4. oswald bastable says:
    April 6, 2012 at 11:27

    This bit from the comments summed it up:
    “…My kids would much rather read the old favourites like Dr Seuss, Enid Blyton, and stories with a bit of adventure, than the PC correct BS that passes for award winning children’s literature these days…”

    :mrgreen:

    • KG says:
      April 6, 2012 at 11:43

      Of course! :roll: All else is just bullshit.

      • Darin says:
        April 6, 2012 at 12:46

        In my days at school we had The Swiss Family Robinson,Huck Fin,The Hiding Place and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.

        Now we have such literary masterpieces as “Suzie has two mommies” :roll:

    • Darin says:
      April 6, 2012 at 23:25

      Nah,everything else pales to the Ford GT1000.If I was gonna spend $100,000 on a car,I would pony up another $124,000 and get the real deal :cool:

      http://youtu.be/tYW_8g1107o

      If I ever hit the Lotto…….. :whoop

      Edit: I just noticed that the words spend and speed are only one letter difference :grin:

      • KG says:
        April 7, 2012 at 08:06

        I always regarded spend and speed as pretty much synonymous, Darin. :lol:
        Yep, the GT would be preferable. So would a Ferrari Testarossa. ;-)

  6. Flashman says:
    April 6, 2012 at 17:08

    Literary awards are meaningless outside the incestuous little circle-jerk comprising pc scribblers who rely on taxpayer funded grants to keep them in chardies and composting toilet heat. [And it’s not all sweetness and light either – these buggers get really bent out of shape when their work is neither nominated nor takes the win.] Winning works sell largely to libraries and minisucule fringe audiences of smug artie-farties and liberal arts academics.

  7. oswald bastable says:
    April 6, 2012 at 17:11

    You only have to sell 5000 books to make the bronze level of ‘Bestseller’ in NZ. Libraries and schools could easily get you there.

    • Flashman says:
      April 7, 2012 at 05:13

      Agreed. I believe 9,000 copies makes one a 24 carat bestselling author.

      But only in little old NZ.

  8. Cadwallader says:
    April 6, 2012 at 17:44

    Further: Literary Awards. I think in defence of the Nobels the search for excellence is still paramount but unfortunately dictates such as religious affiliations seem to reign determinedly.
    EG: Graham Greene was neglected as a British author for William Golding. His deficiency? Roman Catholicism.
    I suspect that something as subjective as literature oughtn’t be in the Nobel scheme which by and large does recognize genuine excellence. The glaring rasp is the award of a “Peace Prize.” This is a crap- award which demeans the other heads in the scheme. Among the recipients of the Peace Prize are Desmond Tutu, Obama, Jimmy Carter, Mother Theresa…get the picture?

  9. KG says:
    April 6, 2012 at 18:47

    I detested his politics, but Steinbeck could sure as hell write. And what about Robert Ruark? Or aren’t those two sufficiently “intellectual”?

    • Cadwallader says:
      April 6, 2012 at 20:23

      Steinbeck’s crime was human empathy. Provincial stories for the allegedly downtrodden.

      There are, in my opinion, 4 great US recipients of the Nobel for Literature.
      Sinclair Lewis, Eugene O’ Neill, William Faulkner(provincially set but universal in theme) and Hemmingway.

      There were many US writers of fiction who never seemed to get a sniff of a resounding award despite their abilities. My favourites include, Edward Albee, Nelson Algren, Arthur Miller, John Kennedy Toole, F Scott Fitzgerald and Tennessee Williams. I am sure there are dozens of others.

      • KG says:
        April 6, 2012 at 20:29

        “Steinbeck’s crime was human empathy. Provincial stories for the allegedly downtrodden.”
        True enough–but there was nothing “allegedly” about some of the downtrodden he wrote about, Cad.
        His “Travels With Charley” and the book he wrote in collaboration with Ed Rickets (“Doc” of Cannery Row) “The Log From The Sea of Cortez” can stand comparison with the best written by any author, imho. Yet a lot of Steinbeck’s critics have read neither.

  10. Francis W. Porretto says:
    April 6, 2012 at 19:05

    “A government-supported artist is an incompetent whore!” — Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

  11. KG says:
    April 6, 2012 at 19:22

    :whoop Well, that about says all that’s necessary on the subject, Francis!

  12. mara says:
    April 6, 2012 at 19:47

    Philistines all. You wouldn’t understand my work at all. However I shall attempt to explain my ongoing relationship with and discourse on the difference between the body and copycat violence.
    With influence as diverse as Kierkgaard and Frida Kablio, new synergies are distilled from both constructed and discovered universalities.
    I have long been fascinated by the unrelenting divergence of meaning; visions become manipulated into a manifesto of meaning, leaving only bleak failure and the possibility of a new reality. etc etc…. :mrgreen: :mrgreen: Too easy. Where do I send the manuscript? :popcorn

    • Cadwallader says:
      April 6, 2012 at 20:25

      If you’d have included the word “paradigm” you would have nuked us all!!!!! :mrgreen:

      • Darin says:
        April 6, 2012 at 23:34

        If there is no juxtaposition of the daily struggle endured by gay and lesbian activists as they seek acceptance by society then sadly it won’t even get a single review in the newspaper of record the New York Times.

        See,I just used the word Juxtaposition in a sentence involving gays and lesbians,where is my Nobel??? :rant

  13. KG says:
    April 6, 2012 at 19:55

    AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGH!!!!!!!!!!! :gunner

  14. mara says:
    April 6, 2012 at 20:14

    Not THAT bad as a first effort is it KG? Not literary enough perhaps? I’ll try harder. So you want to hold off reviewing the 30,000 word manuscript for now? :sad:

    • KG says:
      April 6, 2012 at 20:15

      Err…yes. I’ll hold for now, thank you Mara, good as the effort is. :lol:
      That drivel rolls easily off the pen, doesn’t it?

  15. The Gantt Guy says:
    April 7, 2012 at 01:44

    Sorry to break with topic (well kinda … the topic is literature and my comment is about The Yarts, sort of), but …

    An absolutely HUGE day at the music festival today. Luckily, I get to dial it back a notch tomorrow. But now I have 2 very important questions:

    (1) can somebody please explain Young People to me? Seriously, it looks to me like everybody under 30 stopped off at a panelbeater’s shop on the way to the festival, locked themselves inside and blew the place up. Seems like every damn part of their skin that isn’t covered in ink that makes them look stoopid, has some piece of industrial-scale metal sticking out of it, that makes them look even more stoopid! Do these damn fools ever expect to get a job, or do they know there are no jobs so it doesn’t matter if they look like they escaped from some deranged “nouveau” “artiste’s” studio?
    (2) why is it that the political Left has all the great musicians? I mean, Steve Earle is fantastic and I love his music, but the man is still singing protest songs about George W Bush, for crying out loud. Nothing about the SCFOAMF currently trespassing in the White House. But seriously, is it a left brain / right brain thing, where we Conservatives get all the logic, reason, analytical ability and they, being bereft of those things, get the creativity?

    /rant

    • Darin says:
      April 7, 2012 at 04:13

      #2 is simple,the media,all popular media is tilted left.The talent scouts,recording studios,event promoters etc are all lefties.

      #1 is even simpler.Decades of birth control drugs,illegal drugs and alcohol abuse by “liberated” women means these kids are born semi-retarded and the liberal “education” system moves them from semi to full tilt retarded.

      The shame is the other day I saw an absolutely gorgeous young lady,or at least she would have been had she not decided to have Magellan’s voyage map tattooed down both arms.I thought gee,that’s gonna look great when your 70 :roll

      Remember this epic rant?-

      http://youtu.be/vL0QFZBLca4?t=10m10s

      • The Gantt Guy says:
        April 7, 2012 at 07:31

        That is truly epic. How great to be speaking the truth in love, so powerfully. Mayor Nutter, great speech.

  16. KG says:
    April 7, 2012 at 07:53

    Amen!

  17. WAKE UP says:
    April 7, 2012 at 10:12

    Cadwallader asked: “Darin, do you think there’s been a decent publishing US novelist since 1960?”

    The answer is no, the trail ran dry after the muscular he-man realist writers of the 50s like Nelson Algren. Their successors have been, in the main, a bunch of navel-gazing, self-referencing psychotic wimps, Bret Easton Ellis et al. (I’d probably make an exception for David Foster Wallace) .