Blog
-
Tony Reck recalls one of many arduous treks. The Razor-Viking wilderness is an isolated and rugged mountainous region in the Alpine National Park, about 380 kilometres northeast of Melbourne. It lacks vehicle access, signposts, and track markers. It was November 2024, the Melbourne Cup weekend, and we had four days to complete the Razor Viking… Read more
-
In Chapter Three, Jibun attends an alumni reunion, where he is offended by some of the mildly off-colour gossip shared by his former classmates. His beloved Tsuru is not far from his thoughts at any time, an object of absolute purity. I have borrowed an anonymous erotic artwork from late in the Meiji era (1868-1912),… Read more
-
In my previous post, I referred to Jibun’s description of two women outside Maruzen bookstore as having “a round face, in a flowery kimono, heavily powdered,” assuming them “naturally” to be geisha. His casual observation raises an intriguing issue about the perception of physical beauty across cultures, which will afford us a diversion touching on… Read more
-
Driving through the streets of Fitzroy at night you become obsessed with streetlight and the sound of an imagined disturbance occurring in flat thirteen on the twenty-fifth floor of the Brunswick St. commission flats. In daylight, there is little to see but a urine stain on a tram shelter seat. An old stiff with a… Read more
-
Author Saneatsu Mushanokoji (1885-1976) was one of the first great Japanese modernist writers. He may lay claim to have founded the I-novel (shishosetsu), a specifically Japanese confessional genre in which the author speaks directly and colloquially to the reader (e.g., Lippit 28). Mushanokoji was also a painter of still lifes, a poet and playwright, and… Read more
