Blog

  • Mushanokoji’s The Innocent: Modern self, feudal shadows

    Mushanokoji Saneatsu’s novella The Innocent (1911) incorporates an anecdote that, at first glance, might seem eccentric. Chapter 7 offers a poignant portrait of Jibun’s uncle, prompted by the uncle’s cancer diagnosis and Jibun’s complex emotional response, including reflections on their relationship. Among a few stories expressing the uncle’s colorful character and past, Jibun tells how… Read more

  • 1. Down Train from Horsham (from the draft novel Stawell Bardo)

    Though railway convention would designate a train travelling from Horsham toward Melbourne as an up train, I have titled this chapter Down Train from Horsham intentionally. The descent invoked here is not geographical but tonal: a movement into rougher country, uncertain fortunes, and subterranean narrative currents. It is, in spirit, a passage downward. Down Train… Read more

  • Stawell Bardo: a work in progress

    I’d like to share the draft of a novel I’ve been writing — a work in progress that’s now nearing completion. I’ll be posting chapters every few weeks as I continue to refine and shape the manuscript. The idea began while I was researching the life of my great-great-grandfather, a Chinese immigrant to Australia during… Read more

  • Moonshades: Calderwood’s mad axe murderer of 1870

    Content warning: This piece discusses domestic violence, mental illness, and historical accounts of murder. I first came across the horrifying case of Jane Gray’s murder by her husband, John Gray, in the Sydney Morning Herald of 1870 . A story of homicidal paranoia rooted in delusions of jealousy, it occurred in the village of Calderwood,… Read more

  • Do you what now

    This piece of writing of mine first appeared in Hermes: Literary magazine of the University of Sydney in 1987. I structured it upon principles I observed in iconoclastic giants such as James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, and Tristan Tsara, who are gestured to throughout, along with all sorts of other allusions. I was completing my PhD… Read more