LITMIR.BIZ

Temporariness is a scandal in our culture of monumentalism and its persistent search for permanence. Temporariness, the time of the ephemeral and the performative, the time of speech, the time of nature and its constant changesthese times have little cultural purchase. In this volume two practitioners and theoreticians of time, space and the word embrace the notion of temporarinessseeing in it a site for a renewal of ways of thinking about ourselves, our language, our society and our environment. This collage of fragmentary genres approaches the notion of mitigated presence to build an atlas of intersections attentive to our own temporariness as the site of aesthetic and ethical responsibility. This book is a scintillating meditation on the temporality of human lives and the contemporary possibilities of humanistic writing. John Kinsella and Russell West-Pavlov explore the conjunctions of memoir, theory, poetry, anecdotes, journal entries and other fragmentary forms in their conversations about the political realities of the world and the imperatives of human survival. They write across hemispheres, they interanimate the specific experience of place and history in Germany, Ireland, Western Australia, the Adriatic coast, Africa, New England. 't?mp(?)r?r?n?s is the chance collaboration of two writers and intellectuals that could never have come into existence before it did and that can never be repeated. Philip Mead, University of Melbourne

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In the Shade of the Shady Tree is a collection of stories set in the Western Australian wheatbelt, a vast grain-growing area that ranges across the southwestern end of the immense Australian interior. Kinsella’s stories offer glimpses into the lives of the people who call this area home, as the reader journeys from just north of the town of Geraldton to the far eastern and southern shires of the region. Cast against a backdrop of indigenous dispossession, settler migration, and the destructive impact of land-clearing and monocultural farming methods, the stories offer moments of connection with the inhabitants, ranging from the matter-of-fact to the bizarre and inexplicable. Something about the nature of the place wrestles with all human interactions and affects their outcomes. The land itself is a dominant character, with dust, gnarled scrubland, and the need for rain underpinning human endeavor. Inflected with both contemporary ideas of short fiction and the “everyman” tradition of Australian storytelling, this collection will introduce many readers to a new landscape and unforgettable characters.

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