Come writers and Critics: Caroline Overington’s debut literary column

In searching for a new column name, I had a look around for things that mean a lot to me. I like poems, and big American novels, Australian stories, and Bob Dylan. “Come Writers and Critics” is Dylan. Yes, it is allowed, because he is a Nobel laureate.

Caroline Overington is The Australian's literary editor.

Yes, I will miss the claws, too.

Like most of you, I have been reading Stephen Romei’s column for years and now he is off, lounging in a hammock somewhere.

Semi-retired, the lucky thing.

Among other projects, he has taken up minding anxious pooches whose owners have returned to the office.

A post-COVIDian career, to be sure. He is smitten and who can blame him?

Of course he is still reading – whoever stops? – and he will continue to write for The Weekend Australian’s book pages, which is wonderful for him, for you, and also for me, since it’s to me that the position of Literary Editor has now fallen.

I couldn’t be more pleased.

We are proud of our weekend supplement. We publish book reviews once a day during the week, too.

The emphasis has long been on Australian books and writers, and that will continue.

We will continue also to give you access to superb reviews from The Wall Street Journal, The Times and The Sunday Times, and The
TLS, too.

Some things will change.

Stephen’s column – A Pair Of Ragged Claws – has retired with him. He borrowed the title from a T. S. Eliot poem. It meant a lot to him.

In searching for a new column name, I had a look around for things that mean a lot to me. I like poems, and big American novels, Australian stories, and Bob Dylan.

“Come Writers and Critics” is Dylan.

Yes, it is allowed, because he is a Nobel laureate.

“When I first received this Nobel prize for Literature, I got to wondering exactly how my songs related to literature,” Dylan said, in a recorded lecture to mark the event.

He started his career performing folk songs. Only later did he start writing lyrics of his own.

Dylan said in his lecture that he had obviously been inspired by boyhood reading: Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, Moby Dick, and all the rest.

The themes he had found in great literature, over time, seeped into his songs.

The Odyssey, for example, is essentially about a man trying to find his way back home. Bad things happen, and similar things have happened to Dylan, and probably to you.

“You too have shared a bed with the wrong woman,” Dylan said. “You too have come so far and have been so far blown back.”

Still, “being awarded the Nobel prize for literature is something I never could have imagined or seen coming. Not once have I ever had the time to ask myself, ‘Are my songs literature?’”

With Dylan’s own doubts in mind, I did consider a few different titles for this column, among them: “When She Was Good.”

Philip Roth once used it, and – as stated above – I like big American books. As for the themes in Portnoy’s Complaint – well, some things just never do get boring, do they?

The Australian crime writer, Michael Robotham, also borrowed “When She Was Good” for one of his recent thrillers.

Makes sense, because when he’s good, he’s very, very good.

Both writers appear to have taken “When She Was Good” from a spunky little poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, which I also liked, because poems are a precious and important part of these pages and that will never change.

Sarah Holland-Batt is taking a break, and I hope she will be back soon.

But that particular poem ends with a girl being spanked. I’m no longer a girl, so that was out.

So, “Come Writers and Critics” it is.

If it’s good enough for the Nobel committee, it should be good enough for us.

It also fits pretty perfectly with what we’re trying to do on these pages: encourage writers, and literary criticism.

By chance, I’m starting as Literary Editor just as we here at Review announce the shortlist for the 2021 Australian/Vogel’s literary award.

On offer: $20,000 prize money, and publication by Allen & Unwin, for an unpublished manuscript by a writer under the age of 35.

The Australian/Vogel has helped launch the careers of some of Australia‘s most successful novelists, including Tim Winton, Kate Grenville and Mandy Sayer.

I must admit, I did not get a chance to see all of this year’s entries. The shortlist had been decided before I came on board, but Stephen says the standard was typically high.

We will announce the winner next week. I don’t yet know who it is. I’m excited to find out. Young people belong these pages.

Besides the Vogel shortlist, I’m pleased to publish a review by our chief literary critic, Geordie Williamson, of Nikki Gemmell’s new novel, The Ripping Tree.

Gemmell is a wonderfully talented writer. Her book was 10 years in the making. I know she’s been feeling anxious and there’s absolutely no reason for her to be. It’s terrific.

Besides that, we have an extract from Stan Grant’s important new book, On Thomas Keneally.

It’s a spiky contribution – a bit of take-down, really, of Keneally’s The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith – and I am fine with that.

I should tell you that I arranged to get both writers together, ahead of the book’s release.
Keneally opened his home for the meeting which was a treat all by itself.

Wander the halls, and you might find an Olympic torch here; an ASA gold medal there;

a stack of yellowing cricket bats nestled in a
corner.

 Many readers will know that Keneally – a Booker Prize winner – wrote The Chant from the perspective of the Indigenous outlaw, Jimmie Blacksmith. Audacious then, that would probably be unacceptable now.

Jimmie was based on the real life Jimmy Governor, an Indigenous man who married a white woman, broke down, murdered a white family and went on the run, before being captured and hanged, in 1901.

Indigenous people were framed at the time
as fallen.

If not fallen, then doomed.

Stan Grant, whose family has ties to the real Jimmy Governor, first encountered the book as a 15-year-old boy.

He remembers being excited, then enraged.

In the four decades since, he has been engaged in a mighty tussle with Keneally’s book.

“I have argued with it, agreed and disagreed with it, been torn and uplifted by it. But in the end, I’m glad Tom wrote it,” Grant said, during our meeting at Keneally’s home.

“If he hadn‘t, what would I have had to bite down on for 40 years?”

Now he’s written his own book, in which he takes issues with the depiction of Indigenous people, including Aboriginal women, described in The Chant as “scrawny gins”.

The conversation between the two writers over Keneally’s dining room table was muscular, and at times difficult but by the time they had taken up positions between some fire-blackened trees for a photograph, they had found at least some common ground.

It was a privilege to be part of their conversation – and now to begin this new one, with you.