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Ian McEwan's Lessons marked a sharp twist in a five-decade literary career, and presents an opportunity to reflect on his expansive body of work. The one-time literary rogue and Booker laureate now stands as the unquestioned doyen of modern English fiction, his audacious work perpetually navigating undercurrents of unease.
Roald Dahl's beloved children's books have been given a makeover, with 'sensitivity readers' rewording phrases that might offend modern sensibilities. But what has been lost in this sanitisation of Dahl's work? Do we risk losing the very essence of what makes these works so powerful and enduring?
At the root of questions around ChatGPT are issues of authenticity and creativity. It has the capacity to call the bluff on a society which is increasingly inclined to trade pre-digested ‘messaging’ and call it a conversation. Outsourcing self-expression to a computer forces you to ask yourself what makes a human being. Where does the machine end and where do I begin?
Who wields the most power in the world? If one follows the money trail, it becomes clear that Western societies have become ruled by a new type of aristocracy: a management aristocracy.
We celebrate wordsmiths, minor and major, whose gift it is to write the world for us / To create the nourishing broth, the alphabet soup, of words to work their magic / Words that exhort and advocate / That calm and soothe / Words on which to float away / Words for strength on another day.
Kermit the Frog, of enduring Muppets and Sesame Street fame, was always a favourite with my children and me: he was so amusing and appealing, and also had a way of unobtrusively communicating simple goodness along with the occasional moral message. He was also concerned with the most important matter of the self, so that in his most famous song he puts a positive spin on the matter of greenness, the colour of envy and jealousy.
Ben Jonson is one of the great English Renaissance playwrights but he can also be challenging for the modern reader. When I first came to Jonson some years ago, I attempted a comedy from 1610, The Alchemist. I soon felt out of my depth. Conceding defeat, I put the book aside and told myself that there would be some ‘other time’. This year in Melbourne, with the theatres closed, the streets largely deserted, and travel restrictions firmly in place, that ‘other time’ arrived.
Sins have often been divided into those of thought, word and deed, with deed regarded as the worst. Today we pay more attention to sinful words, realising the harm that they can do. Bad words can bring social exclusion. Yet complex questions surrounding the use of words remain.
During her last year in office Gladys Berejiklian divided people over her response to the Coronavirus. Even her critics, however, praised her decision to resign from office after the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) announced that it was investigating her conduct.
While we can’t conflate accusations against Roth’s biographer with his subject, this recent Blake Bailey scandal invites us to revisit, through a 21st century lens, the world of someone considered one of the definitive writers of the 20th century.
The question being asked, however, is one that puts the cart before the horse. The question of ‘What do you want to see in the national curriculum?’ presupposes the answer to another question: What even is the purpose of schooling?
In measures now sadly familiar in 2020, theatres were closed once the number of weekly deaths exceeded 30, later 40, but because actors and the theatre world itself were so economically vulnerable, actors, understandably intent on earning a living, soon legally or otherwise cut themselves some slack by taking liberties with the rules governing performances and quarantine — again, a phenomenon that is now, against all previous odds, familiar to people of 2020.