From what we know however (as opposed to what we’ve been told) the Iranians are likely to have had some justifiable grounds for their action.

Who would know for sure are the US government, the British government, the Russian government …. and maybe a few other governments that just happened to have their for-peaceful-purposes-only satellites over, above, near, close-to and around the area at that time on that day. You can bet every single image of that particular part of Planet Earth at that time has been gone over with a fine-tooth comb …… so there would probably be a few hundred people who actually do know but absolutely NONE of them are going to share that with ordinary folk like you and me. The Royal Navy ship would nave its own log of course but the British won’t say too much until they get all 15 of their sailors back.

Perhaps there’s a reader out there that hasn’t listened to them so if I could just reach out for a second… Credited with being pioneers of the soft/loud school of rock, the Pixies developed a simple template that could be easily replicated to a very good standard and offered an alternative to the following schools – loud/loud; loud/noodle; soft/soft; noodle/noodle. In a lot of ways they picked up on the Jesus and Mary Chains attempt to get a lighter use of noise and hiss without needing the Beach Boys. The material is the mix you’d expect from a pasty white Spanish obsessed singer , a female bassist, a Filipino guitarist and a drummer that didn’t self-combust. Songs about rockets, lifts, catholicism, activists, physics, and love – all in mostly under three minutes. They sound as good in the originals as they do on the demo tape, as they do acoustic, as they do on a Japanese tribute album. Great album covers, shite videos, but if you can get your hands on a copy of their Newport acoustic set you’ll have yourself a lovely afternoon.

a twice-divorced air-conditioner repairwoman who lives in a renovated schoolbus in Perth, and who discovers she’s descended from a secret clan of altruistic werewolves. On your marks, get set… write!

Maybe we could do the LP short story contest!

a twice-divorced air-conditioner repairwoman who lives in a renovated schoolbus in Perth

Hey!

The point is well taken about works written trying to ingratiate themselves to a prize not being so great, but that’s only because the criteria are still too vague, so people write what they think the judges will want to hear, on a hunch, instead of knowing *exactly* what the judges want to hear.

I think it would be fun if there was, say, a literary prize, where each year the (yearly-changing) criteria and subject of the work was bewilderingly intricate and exact, and only open to already-published writers. Then we would really see an equal test of skill, a joust for the prize as such, as each writer tried to clear the hurdles of writing about, say, a twice-divorced air-conditioner repairwoman who lives in a renovated schoolbus in Perth, and who discovers she’s descended from a secret clan of altruistic werewolves. On your marks, get set… write!

Re-education camp for you, young man.

So, how does that work then? Obviously we have our hands bound so we can’t use the handball any more, but then what?

I hope I was not suggesting anyone would write anything with an eye on a prize. Rather, that Australians are too smart to do such a thing. In other words, the ‘nets’ are not going to stand in the way of good writing. But I was not very clear, I’m sorry.

Genevieve — one can, in fact, pick a novel that has been written with one eye on winning the Miles Franklin, or any other prize with conditions, in a heartbeat. Almost by definition, it won’t be a good enough novel to win that or indeed any other prize.

PC, pisstakes aside… you’re shitting me, right? I could no more intend to win the MF or Aus/Vogel etc than I could milk a bull – apart from satisfying the age qualifications attached to the latter.

I remember going through THTSTP after getting the MF nomination forms from the publisher and counting the number of pages set in Australia. Didn’t have a hope in Hell was my considered view.

I don’t like people supporting Port Adelaide, but nothing much seems to get done about that.

Re-education camp for you, young man.

The novelist Emily McGuire agreed: “I don’t like the idea of judging fiction based on its message.�

Rubbish. You’d have to be an ‘arts for art’s sake’ purist (and there are not many of them) to think that the message of a book does not in large part affect its popularity and reception.

Actually, it’s even worse than that; I don’t think she can have been listening properly. (Although it is a bit disconcerting when a journo calls out of the blue and asks for a comment about something; it’s easy to say something dumb under those circumstances.) The novels concerned will not be judged on their message. Their eligibility for the prize will, at least to some extent — but not their literary merit.

The Herald’s chief book critic, Andrew Riemer, praised the award’s generosity but said: “I don’t like literary prizes being used for anything that can be seen as propaganda or a social agenda … I would have been happier if it had set out to reward novelists’ skill and imagination without attaching strings.”

Well, get your own blog literary prize then.

I don’t like people supporting Port Adelaide, but nothing much seems to get done about that.

The novelist Emily McGuire agreed: “I don’t like the idea of judging fiction based on its message.”

Rubbish. You’d have to be an ‘arts for art’s sake’ purist (and there are not many of them) to think that the message of a book does not in large part affect its popularity and reception.

If Dan Brown wrote a novel that was as technically skilled as The Da Vinci Code, but took the view that the Catholic Church was simply an ordinary bureaucracy with ordinary problems and faults, how well would it sell?

TDVC took off because it suits readers to believe that dark, unlikely and fantastic conspiracies exist and that the Catholic Church is behind most of them.

By focussing on qualities inherent in the writing, rather than the identity of the author, they’re not excluding anyone from entering the award based on things over which they have no control (age, gender, race) etc.

When I was told the conditions of the prize, you know what the very first book I thought of as an ideal winner was? Frank Moorhouse’s Grand Days.

The conditions do specify an Australian author — but even that is open to interpretation. What they will have to do, and quickly (though I’m sure the ASA, like the professional body it is, will already be all over this one), is decide who gets to define the terms, and then be consistent about it.

And in any case, it’s private patronage, not state patronage. They can base the award on anything they like.

That, SL, is the nail on the head, and is the reason why I always look with utter bemusement at the annual angst about whether or not the Miles Franklin criteria ’should be changed’ — especially when all they have to do is ask a lawyer one simple question about the nature of a will.

Genevieve — one can, in fact, pick a novel that has been written with one eye on winning the Miles Franklin, or any other prize with conditions, in a heartbeat. Almost by definition, it won’t be a good enough novel to win that or indeed any other prize.

My respect for M.J. Hyland, already considerable, has tripled since she wrote a novel that has nothing to do with Australia, thereby ruling herself out of contention for the Miles Franklin, because she wanted to write a good novel more than she wanted to win a big prize.

Within the very narrow findings of Ms Lindsay’s study, mentioned by the SMH reporter, one might suggest that it is the process by which such characters arrive at a positive or empowering point of view, or attempt to discover one, that is going to be available to exploration within a novel, rather than a QED.

She writes as though they are part of a ’suburban social worker’ novel (or worse still, a completed real life study), said type of novel being most recently eschewed by the Orange judges.

I’m sure Australian judges are savvy enough to fly by such nets.

The Oz’s equally excellent Murray Waldren, after several years of editing good literary pages, has moved or been moved from the position (don’t know the details, and even if I did would probably not blog about them) just this last week, so there might have been some kind of fumbled handball there, and in any case the somewhat salacious and somewhat beaten-up Frank Moorhouse story may have eclipsed what I’m sure Frank would agree is a much more important literary story.

But hey, a story containing the phrases ‘vengeful ex-wife’, ‘affair wth teacher’, ‘long-time homosexual lover’ and Much More is going to beat a story about money for writers and encouragement for positive representations of girls and women onto the front page every time.

I have the dead-tree Age this morning, but haven’t looked through it yet — there may be something hidden away in there.

The author and critic Debra Adelaide worried the award might encourage the tendency of Australian writing to be “safe and constrained”.

This I don’t get, though.

Also, be sure to look through the book reviews…