Australian "literature"

Thanks, I never use reverse image search because it rarely works.

I know the name, she's too skinny though I haven't watched enough of her to remember the face.

I understand user. Though her face be pretty, I think we can all agree her greatest asset is her butthole.

Honestly I think it's just a problem with our teachers and students than anything else.
My high school teachers struggled to get anybody to read the single 150-200 page books we were assigned over the holidays and at that point 20% of my cohort had dropped out.
Why would a teacher want to suffer through what american teachers give to their students, books like the canterbury tales in middle english or the iliad, when the students just don't care unlike american students?

got to a point in my high-school where the teachers even said fuck it and we dismissed the officially set garbage and read other works.

richard flanagan is cool.

Here's a documentary about him because I know half of you are semi-illiterate

youtube.com/watch?v=VFBp-TvU8Sk

>semi-illiterate

I teach english in NSW and I can say that's partly because they don't deem any genuinely challenging Australian literature suitable for high school aged kids, so they make them read shitty memoirs about aboriginals and immigrants, and to be honest they're probably right, kids are idiots and can't appreciate good literature

That being said, Tree of Man is a prescribed text for the HSC, though I don't know of a single school that chooses it, can you imagine trying to convince some dropkick 17 year old to read that tome? Most kids wont read a book even if its 200 pages, god knows I didn't when I was in their position.

>YOUR HIGHNESS! AN IDEA HAS COME TO MY MIND IN THE EARLIEST OF DAWN LIGHT! LET US SEND ALL OF OUR CRIMINALS TO A BARREN WASTELAND OF AN ISLAND ON THE EDGE OF THE WORLD AND LET THEM BUILD A NATION!

Eternal Anglo. How are they gonna come up with decent literature between their lust for rape and crime and the constant raids by kangaroos and emus?

Australian here, the only "literature" we have here are from "oppressed" PoC authors. Their prose is so shitty that it's painful to read.

>LET THEM BUILD A NATION!
tbf they didnt think this would happen, i'm sure they intended it to remain eternally a penal colony... then nationalism became a thing

but its true enough, though its a mixture of things. Firstly, we don't have much of a population, secondly, we just haven't been around very long, and lastly, and probably most importantly, our nation has never been through any particularly notable collective trauma... Gallipoli and the Stolen Generations maybe, but those are slim pickings compared to a revolution, a civil war, an invasion etc.

it's sad but its true. there is good Australian literature, just nothing yet that makes us formidable on the world stage, but honestly its the same of the all the colonies.. Canada, New Zealand, hell, India?

>there is good Australian literature

post some.

I'd give Tim Winton 7/10

he's shilling a new book and I've been enjoying listening to him talking about is body of work on the radio

The time it took for Australia to go from a penal colony to one of the most desirable places on Earth is pretty spectacular.

Every aus/lit/ person should read this. It explains why Australia hasn't had proper literature of its own or even a proper culture of its own, since at least the Federation period.

We went straight from LARPing as Britons to multicult-Americanised non-culture.

...

dude I said, good, not game changing
I'd class Tim Winton as good, others that have been mentioned in this thread as well, Slessor, Murray, Garner. I'm not saying these are classics, but they're good literature. 7/10-8/10. The only person above them is Patrick White, but he's basically British (which is another problem, there aren't so many people who can even truthfully call themselves 'Australian' - so many of us recent migrants who haven't been in the country long enough to have forged any strong connection to the place, culture etc. I consider myself Australian but my family is from New Zealand, for example, even if I was an amazing author it's not as though I'd be able to write an authentically 'Australian' novel, not in the same way that, say, Faulkner is able to write about the South. There are plenty of fourth, fifth, sixth generation Aussies around of course, but just not as many as most places in the world.)

I didn't know who the fuck she was until today.

This is the ideal feminist literature. You may not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like

oi cunt fok that readin shit n pass me a vb

is this any good?

tfw enjoyed Maestro

>our nation has never been through any particularly notable collective trauma
Wesconnex bro...

They were all petty crimes like stealing a loaf of bread

Also, most aussies are not descendants from the convicts

As an australian, seeing australian placenames and references in books/movies/songs just turns me off, and I cant take it seriously.

Most australian lit is either one of two archetypes:

1. bush poet shit about rusty tin roofs and the outback (our landscape is a depressing dirtscape and everyone lives in cities anyway)

2. 60s-80s bastardized pomo. Extremely wanky, exclusively first person, obligatory abbos.

It's just garbage whichever way you look. There is no literary culture here. A while ago in fact I posted the past winning submissions of a local writing competition here, and many laffs were had.

But seriously, why does it have to be this way? Did we, culturally, come onto the scene too late?

>seeing australian placenames and references in books/movies/songs just turns me off, and I cant take it seriously.

same and I don't know why, maybe its cultural cringe? I dont mind it if its done in a matter of fact way, the problem with most Australian creators is they try to create something "Australian." I rememebr watching an episode of Jack Irish and when he unlocked a door they would show a close up of the St Kilda Saints (or was it Essendon) keyring hanging off his keys just to remind you HEY! THIS IS SET IN MEEEELBOURNE!!!! He would go to a pub and there'd be two old geezers rattling off VFL statistics from 40 years ago... so fucking irritating.

Frederic Manning, :The Middle Parts of Fortune', like Hemingway but only wrote about war

Short stories of Henry Lawson and Barbra Baynton:
bush stories about mad swagmen and the like

Bush Veeky Forums is good in that it's entirely sincere, it's a relic from our once uncorrupted culture. Now, Australia is a cadaver with foreign maggots crawling in the wounds of the cities, and the old Australians have had their children corrupted by media and television. Look at filth like "the project" on TV. This is the new face of Australia, our country was sold out from under us and six feet under the ground before we were even born.

>one of the most desirable places on Earth
No one wants to live in your liberal shithole.

t. minimum wage amerifat

>all these unpatriotic australians

You should be ashamed of yourselves. We are a small and very young country. Of course we cannot compete with the likes of England, steeped in literary traditions going back hundreds of years, and USA, the third most populous country in the world.

How about you actually explore Australian literature for yourselves instead of doing an appeal to futility fallacy along the lines of:
>Because Australia doesn't have a Shakespeare or a Melville we are shit and will always be shit.

Why don't you refute or at least provide an alternate perspective to the opinions and observations presented in this thread then complain about why they don't like australian literature?
i agree with pretty much all of them that australian literature is dull and depressing and derivative to an extent not found in american or canadian literature.
Why should we read our literature?

Yeah that book is not very good.

Most good aus literature is poetry desu. John Kinsella, Les Murray, Gwen Harwood, AD Hope, John Forbes, the list goes on...

This

Australia went from being a social laboratory of the British Empire to a globalized Anglo-American mass culture society ie no culture. I will definitely check this book out it sounds right up my alley.

Youre an idiot.

>serbia's greatest achievement.jpg

Fascinating.

>As an australian, seeing australian placenames and references in books/movies/songs just turns me off, and I cant take it seriously.
I am french and the same applies with france for me

Date et lieu de naissance : 15 juin 1986 (31 ans), Wilmington, NC
Taille : 5 pi 7 po
Nom complet : Jessica Stoyadinovich
Enseignement : Université des arts, Delaware College of Art and Design

Now I see

Only liberals care about nations.

I am. So get out.

In my high school we got to read a detective novel about a pair of men who hunt down and torture the pedophiles who diddled them as boys.
It wasn't what I'd call literature, but it was really fun to read in class.

Walkgod on Nobel prize watch

Australian lit is never going to improve if any criticism is shouted down as unpatriotic.

...

>he said without a hint of irony

>criticism = comparing our literature to another country's literature, countries of which are far more populous and have large traditions, exploring their country and culture/s and literary experimentation
>criticism = not even having read much Australian literature but dismissing it because it does not have the large audience like famous English and American authors

>Australia went from being a social laboratory of the British Empire

New Zealand and Adelaide were the social laboratories m9, the free settlers there were genuinely trying to design something of a socialist utopia, but I wouldn't say the same of Sydney and Melbourne.

>this thread

No response here yet which is sad. I definitely understand what you're saying about Voss in regards to Tolstoy. Voss and Anna K both led me through such a vivid experience and in very similar ways. I would argue in personal opinion that Voss is the greatest Australian novel written.

Shame that this is the only user to mention Helen Garner. She really is a remarkable writer. I strongly recommend (to everyone) Monkey Grip. Remarkable novel(la?).

would it fucking kill you to just say her name instead of archly directing someone to floogle?

my english teacher got me to read, shit, i can't remember, something by thomas hardy, by claiming there was a rape in it.

there wasn't.

> takes vb can
> reads it

fucking trash. 2/10.

now REDBACK DOGBOLTER.. there's a beer you can read!

>Of course we cannot compete with the likes of England

why would we want to? England's history is a long litany of invasions, betrayals and occupations. and look at them today.

ITT: uncultured philistines who haven't read Les Murray yet

Yeah I'd definitely recommend it.

True I was speaking in broad generalities but thanks for adding more detail.

>And I can't even fucking read

What did Mark Brandan "Chopper" Reed mean by this?

youtube.com/watch?v=Fwnz4QqrOPY

>MY SIDES IN THE STRATOSPHERE !!!1!!!

how does this make you feel Veeky Forums?

His King Kong tattoo is unironically effay

What the fuck is happening with that color correction. Is the ideal Australia constantly blue?

C U N T

Not true, read the suggestions here. Most of them are assigned reading in an Australian literature unit im taking.

still better than "canlit"