Australian Literary Studies articles from October 2004

Australian Literary Studies archives from October 2004

Who's who? Mapping hoaxes and imposture in Australian literary history.
October 1, 2004... IN July of this year, Norma Khouri's international best-selling autobiography, Forbidden Love, was revealed to be a fabrication. Khouri is not an Australian but many of those who wrote about the hoax explicitly of implicitly claimed her as one,...

'The slaughterman of Wagga Wagga': imposture, national identity, and the Tichborne affair.
October 1, 2004... ON 24 December 1866 a butcher from Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, arrived in London and claimed to be Roger Tichborne, the long-lost son of a wealthy English family and heir to a very large fortune. Roger Tichborne had not been seen since he...

The company she keeps: Demidenko and the problems of imposture in autobiography.
October 1, 2004... To combine imposture with autobiography is surely to create an oxymoron. Despite the extravagantly creative strategies that some autobiographers have used (famously, Gertrude Stein writing as Alice B. Toklas, more recently David Eggers playing...

Reading Carey Reading Malley.(Ern Malley; Peter Carey)
October 1, 2004... THERE is a moment in My Life as a Fake when Christopher Chubb considers, not for the last time, 'the blasphemous possibility that he had, with his own pen, created blood and bone and a beating heart' (152). This point of despair in Chubb marks...

A ghost story in two parts: Charles Dickens, Peter Carey, and avenging phantoms.
October 1, 2004... The hostis responds to hospitality in the way that the ghost recalls himself to the living, not letting them forget. (Anne Dufourmantelle, 'Invitation,' Of Hospitality 4) (1) It is only just that an argument about phantoms begin by...

O'Grady, John see 'Culotta, Nino': popular authorship, duplicity and celebrity.(They're a Weird Mob)(Critical Essay)
October 1, 2004... THERE are, perhaps, two kinds of hoaxes. The first works only so long as it remains undiscovered. The second, by contrast, depends upon being discovered: only when the hoaxer's cover is blown will the point of the hoax be revealed. Most...

The mysterious case of Carter Brown: or, who really killed the Australian author?
October 1, 2004... THE persona 'Carter Brown' started modestly enough in the Sydney offices of Horwitz Publications in 1951. The company published locally written fiction, specifically comics and soft-covered genre novels--in common parlance, 'pulp fiction.' (1)...

On not being Australian: Mudrooroo and Demidenko.
October 1, 2004... THERE are two parts to this title. That which comes after the colon is an obvious reference for an Australian collection such as this, both authors having gained a level of prominence that made them famous internationally. In the United States...

Mudrooroo: crafty impostor or rebel with a cause?
October 1, 2004... Impostures succeed because, not in spite, of their fictitiousness. They take wing with congenial cultural fantasies. Impostors persevere because any fear they may have of being discovered is overshadowed by their dread of being alone. (Hillel...

Demidenko/Darville: a Ukrainian-Australian point of view.
October 1, 2004... THE Demidenko/Darville affair was a difficult episode in the cultural life of Australia. News of the young writer--s identity fraud hit front pages of newspapers and the headlines of television and radio. Critique and commentary flooded media...

In his own sweet time: Carmen's coming out.
October 1, 2004... IN 1994, Wanda Koolmatrie's autobiography, My Own Sweet Time, was published by Magabala books and rapidly gained national recognition. In 1995, the book won the Nita May Dobbie Award for a first novel by a woman writer, the judges praising it...

Helping yourself: Marlo Morgan and the fabrication of indigenous wisdom.
October 1, 2004... IN my role as a teacher of Australian literature and Australian studies in an Australian university, I find my classes regularly contain a significant number of international students undertaking a semester of 'study abroad'. As an introductory...

Tainted testimony: the Khouri affair.
October 1, 2004... AT times like this, everyone becomes a literary critic: All autobiographies contain little lies, but Norma Khouri's may be one of the many that are one big lie. Khouri's best-seller Forbidden Love... had the usual formula for...