19 Comments
User's avatar
William Poulos's avatar

Can't believe you didn't like Bleak House. I'm unsubscribing and calling the Governor General to recommend your immediate deportation.

Oz's avatar

Liked it didnt love it

Cam Peters's avatar

Btw, formatting error where the Abul Rizvi article actually links to the Australian Identity one.

Gabriel Wittenberg's avatar

How can we get in touch re the donation?

Oz's avatar

Reply to the email or email me at misha dot saul at gmail dot com

Adham Bishr's avatar

I would also suggest Lincoln's writings and Team of Rivals by Goodwin to really understand his greatness. Truly a man that met the moment.

Christopher / Chaim's avatar

I assume you know about the early Jews that turned up in NZ, one of whom started a brewery - kosher you see. That became the basis for one of NZs largest breweries company, Lion Nathan.

Oz's avatar

Did not know - thanks, will look up and maybe add!

Christopher / Chaim's avatar

I'll send you a cover image of the book where this is recorded, next week.

Age of Infovores's avatar

What's wrong with Open Socrates?

Oz's avatar

I was bored by the tangle of philosophical premises and wranglings upfront and stopped. So as I said its not for me, rather than there is something wrong with it

Hillaire Cohen's avatar

If you’ve read The Fatal Shore and the abridged Clark History of Australia, is the Abbott book still worth getting? When I saw him doing the podcast circuit, I immediately assumed it was just goy pulp for the Dymocks military history aisle—socks-and-Birkenstocks crowd.

Oz's avatar

It's a good summary by a politicial participant. Not going to be life changing, obv not same function as Manning Clark or Robert Hughes!

Hillaire Cohen's avatar

Thanks! Have you thought about getting into Westerns after Fehrenbach? Since you just finished Stoner, you should definitely check out John Williams' other book, Butcher’s Crossing.

If you’re open to other recommendations:

Charles Portis’ Dog of the South is also really good - the author developed the “sensitive young man” in rural Arkansas 50+ years before BAP. Protagonist is a rudderless student who is still swapping majors at 26, collects massive tomes on the Civil War, compulsively listens to a taped lecture on the Siege of Vicksburg when he’s shaving or driving with his wife. He then spends the rest of the novel pursuing her after she absconds to Mexico with her ex-husband. Portis nails the “Southern Gothic retard” archetype found in other writers like O’Connor.

And you could bookend the reading journey with Desert Solitaire; it kind of depicts the end of America through the death of the frontier. Sunburn, Pueblo Indian ruins, transcribing bird song, uranium mining, the last cowboys, Mormon country taverns that can only serve 3% beer. Very beautiful, elegiac work.

Both of these are on Audible.

Oz's avatar

Thanks! Have Lonesome Dove and unread McCarthys on the list also

Adham Bishr's avatar

Lonesome Dove is very good if you stick with it.

Hillaire Cohen's avatar

Kind of speaks to the poverty of Israeli culture that they never produced a Kurosawa. Early settlers were really into the whole Cowboy aesthetic. Second/Third Aliyah period seems like the perfect setting for a Seven Samurai-style Western.

Oz's avatar

Israeli culture is quite rich, but they never really valorised the frontier in the same way.

Hillaire Cohen's avatar

Rich in the sense that there’s a plurality of cultures, and they have some fantastic authors and films (Oz, Grossman, Big Bad Wolves, Waltz with Bashir), but this represents a kind of niche. I’m referring more to forms of cultural production that have scale and broader impact.