Geordie Williamson

A NEW collection of Walter Murdoch’s wide-ranging and witty writings reminds us that pleasure is the first principle of the essay.

PHILIP Larkin famously suggested that sex began in 1963, “between the end of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles’ first LP”,

TERRENCE Malick’s genius is on display yet again in The Tree of Life.

PEOPLE often speak of surfing and poetry in the same breath.

SALLY Heath’s first issue as editor of Meanjin includes writers with rhetorical subtlety and intellectual independence.

BERYL Bainbridge’s final novel is a dazzling, discordant oddity. It is an old Polaroid that has only half developed.

FOR sharp social and political analysis, call a literary critic, trained to sift word chaff.

THE winner of The Australian/Vogel Literary Award had an eloquence and intensity that did not override its faults so much as render them trifles.

THE enduring importance of the literary prize that has become the benchmark for finding new voices in Australian writing.

IN September 2008, the American writer David Foster Wallace committed suicide, hanging himself on the patio of his California home.