Sep 18
Last week I mentioned that the September Meanjin has an essay by me about ghosts and ghost stories. At the time the piece was print-only, but I’m delighted to say it’s now available online in its entirety.
Obviously I think you should read it right away, but once you have I think you should come back here, because in the week since it was published it’s acquired an extremely unsettling postscript …
Sep 12
Bronwyn Rennex, ‘Safety Pin’, © Bronwyn Rennex, 2004.
The new Meanjin is out today, and as well as being an incredibly gorgeous physical object, includes a piece by me about ghost stories and recent research suggesting many of our encounters with the uncanny may have a physiological basis. You can buy the issue in good bookshops, online or you can subscribe (a particularly good deal at present because Meanjin are offering five issues for the price of four during September), but if you’d like a taste, here are the first few paragraphs:
In 2007, while on a residency in Paris, my partner and I took time out to visit friends in London. It was August, and we were fortunate enough to be offered the opportunity to mind a friend’s mother’s house in Balham Hill. The first night we stayed we were tired; it had been a long day, travelling on the Eurostar with our fifteen-month-old, and so we ordered a pizza, watched television and went to bed early.
I have never been a good sleeper, especially in unfamiliar places, but that night I was asleep almost as soon as my head hit the pillow. For a time I slept undisturbed, but then, sometime deep in the night, I woke, falling out of a deep dreamless sleep into the sort of strange wakefulness jetlag induces. At first I was disoriented, the room unfamiliar in the darkness. Next to me I could hear my partner breathing. Gradually I realised where I was, but even as I did
I was gripped by the certainty I had not woken of my own accord, and that something, somewhere, was wrong.
And then, quite suddenly, I heard a child cry …
Update: the piece is now online, so you can read it at your leisure. But when you have make sure you come back and read the postscript. Alternatively you can buy Meanjin 71/3 online or subscribe.
Sep 11
Some of you may have noticed I had a review of Ian McEwan’s new novel, Sweet Tooth in Saturday’s Weekend Australian.
I’ve reproduced the review over the fold in case you’d like to read it, but before you do I thought I might point you toward my reviews of Karen Walker’s vastly overhyped The Age of Miracles and Lauren Groff’s wonderful Arcadia, both of which appeard a few weeks ago, and both of which are books I want to fold into a longer piece I’m working on about the current fashion for dystopia, and what it tells us about the state of science fiction and our imagining of the future more generally.
And while you’re there you might want to check out my reviews of G. Willow Wilson’s Alif the Unseen, and Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2312, both of which I’ve now posted on the site.
I’ve just come across this little item on NPR about Neko Case’s new album, which includes a scrap of a song and a bit of her sounding pretty vulnerable about the process of putting a record together. It’s worth a listen, as is this great little featurette I posted a while back about the recording of her last album, Middle Cyclone (and indeed this amazing live version of ‘I wish I was the Moon’).
I’m always slightly bemused by the fact it’s Middle Cyclone that’s ended up being Case’s breakout album, because if the truth be told the album I find myself going back to the most is the one before it, the brilliant and luminous Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, a disc that might be less polished than Middle Cyclone, but is starker and stranger and filled with that very special sense of magic and discovery you get when a writer or musician or artist is suddenly liberated into the possibilities of something new.
Here’s an interview and a live performance of ‘Hold On, Hold On’. Jump to 7:24 for the song.
And while I’ve got you can I recommend you check out the rather hilarious Nash Edgerton video clip for ‘Duquesne Whistle’, the first track from Bob Dylan’s new album, Tempest (and while you’re there Alexis Petridis’ review of the album, which pretty much nails my feelings about it (not least because I’ve spent a lot of the past week listening to the extraordinarily brilliant Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde)) …
And finally you might want to take a look at Dorian Lynskey’s profile of David Bowie, published to celebrate the opening of the Victoria and Albert Museum’s Bowie retrospective exhibition (an exhibition that also inspired the now-reclusive Bowie to release one of the funnier public statements I’ve read in a while). You might also want to check out Hugo Wilcken’s excellent 33 1/3 study of Bowie’s Low (available as a book and for Kindle
And because I can’t resist it, here’s Bowie’s ‘Song for Bob Dylan’, off Hunky Dory (another album I’ve been working hard lately) and a lovely HD video for ‘Life on Mars’.
city of tongues 