Stephen Downes

ON THE FIRST day of tumultuous 2020, a Serbian used the English language properly. Novak Djokovic told reporters that he had been saddened and moved – I’m paraphrasing – by the plights of Australians “affected” by bushfires. Hallelujah!! More power to his forehand. Call him Novak, and he alone, it seems, has survived the onslaught of those idiotic and lazy noun-verbalisers who use increasingly the rubbish word impacting. Why are impacted and impacting everywhere, gabbled so constantly on radio, on …

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The following piece was published in November 2019 in Fairfax Media newspapers and online.   I’ve had it with multiple. It’s a rubbish word. It says nothing. Yet it’s everywhere … in print, online and on the airwaves. We read of fans who make multiple trips to hear a band, of snakes that bite victims multiple times, and miners who’ve had multiple warnings to clean up their messes. Anywhere that people write and broadcast English, it seems, you’ll hear the …

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WHAT FOLLOWS is a piece I wrote last year about Sigmund Freud and the uncanny. It coincided with the 100th anniversary of the great psychoanalyst’s essay on the subject. He almost apologised for giving his views on the concept, but that he did indicates its importance in thinking and writing. Especially the latter; the uncanny as a concept is used not just by Gothic storytellers and Hollywood scriptwriters. It’s fundamental to all great literature, which is written, as literary sages …

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