Tag: Mikhail Bakhtin

Dies Festus

by Justin Clemens   Although the academic conferences dry up like a desert pool, the literary festivals never end. From Adelaide and Alice Springs to Woollahra and the Whitsundays, it’s a perpetually-effervescing celebration of writing of all kinds. Whether you’re into poetry or prose, digital writing or graphic novels, romance, sci-fi, horror, crime, comic extravaganzas, theatricals, screen-writing, non-fiction, creative non-fiction, uncreative writing, business-writing, medical-writing, science-writing, adult or children’s literature, emerging, aging, dead or unborn writers, art books, rare books, common books, no books, Indigenous or Jewish writers, the country, the coast, or the city — there’s a festival for you.…

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The Novel

by Aashish Kaul There is a line in Alberto Manguel’s With Borges where, reminiscing about his childhood, Borges reveals how in those days he would regularly accompany his father to the National Library in Buenos Aires and, too timid to ask for a book, would often simply pull out a volume of the Britannica and read at random. This is how he said he learned in one day about ‘the Druids, the Druzes and Dryden.’ The brief statement is delivered by the ageing writer in his typical casual manner, but its intent is clear: a reader can derive all of…

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