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Sebald’s literary Big Bang

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THE FOLLOWING article of mine was published in the ‘review’ section of The Weekend Australian in June 2018. Twenty years ago this month (June 1998) The Harvill Press in London published an English translation of a German novel that shredded the conventions of creative writing. Among many scholars and critics, its English explosion was something like a literary Big Bang. W. G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn lacked plot and character development. Its narrator meandered physically and intellectually, retelling unconnected …

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ABC’s ‘physical proximity’ to waffle

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The ABC pleads for more money. (Don’t we all?) But you’d think that its news departments, editors, and journalists would be well-enough funded to avoid the kind of fourth-rate writing in last night’s Victorian TV news. There was Tamara Oudyn reading the bulletin. I wasn’t concentrating well enough to take in the subject matter, but I did clearly hear her say that something or someone was ‘in physical proximity’ to someone or something else.  (The item was probably to do …

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Let’s demolish ‘impact’

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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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