Listening to Stanley Fish talk about the sentence on The Book Show got us thinking here at The Column about exemplary first sentences from Australian short stories. Here’s what Fish had to say about the opening sentence. ‘It is a promissory note. It telegraphs everything that’s going to follow … It has an angle of … Read More
THE COLUMN
Guest blogger Ryan O’Neill
Marcus Clarke’s Offspring In his 1958 essay, “The Prodigal Son” Patrick White railed against Australian fiction as being “the dreary, dun-coloured offspring of journalistic realism.” While it is true that realism has long been dominant in Australian writing, and the Australian short story, there is a long tradition of experimental stories in Australia, as far … Read More