Tributes to Peter Corris
Peter Corris, the ‘Godfather of Australian crime fiction’, died in his sleep on 30 August 2018. His Godfather columns have been part of the Newtown Review of Books from the beginning, and we feel his loss keenly. Following are some tributes that were given at his...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on The Daughter of Time
When you say ‘I read it a hundred years ago’ about a book you’re about to re-read, what you really mean is that you can’t remember whether you read it ten, 20 or more years ago. This is not the case with me and Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time (1951); I know...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on a suburban hot spot
Very kindly, a neighbour recently gave Jean a jar of home-made marmalade. I was reminded that my mother used to make jam and what a hive of DIY activity the dreary southern suburb of Bentleigh, Melbourne, really was. As I’ve mentioned before, my father cemented paths...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on being doubly bookish
I’ve written before about having two books on the go to read – one on my Kindle and one as an audio. Colour me bookish, but it doesn’t always work out well. Recently I abandoned one of each, a rare thing for me to do, having paid for them. One was a crime story and...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on the great indifference
I remember a conversation on ABC radio between Philip Adams and Gore Vidal, both avowed atheists, in which Adams said that whereas America had initially been settled by Puritans, Australia’s first white settlers were criminals. In his honeyed tones Vidal said, ‘You...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on AFL at the crossroads
There is talk of the AFL making changes to the rules of Australian football to make it a more interesting and watchable game. Something such is sorely needed. Attendances are down and many people, including players, confess to turning off the television coverage. In...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on Evan Whitton
Evan Whitton, who died this week aged 90, was editor of the National Times when I worked at the paper in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The winner of five Walkley Awards for investigative journalism and the Graham Perkins Journalist of the Year Award for his coverage...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on poetry
I was exposed to poetry in primary school – Walter de la Mare, perhaps, and ‘My Country’ by Dorothea Mackellar almost certainly. The greatest impact was from the Australian bush ballads by Lawson, Paterson, Gordon, et al. A fourth-grade teacher, Mr Harry, was an...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on (book) life after death
I’ve just finished Sebastian Faulks’s take on PG Wodehouse, Jeeves and the Wedding Bells (2013). Taking up this kind of challenge … or perhaps accepting this kind of commission from a dead writer’s estate, more accurately, has become something of an industry among...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on turning 70
‘Don’t be Ashamed of Your Age’ – country song by Willie Nelson The Biblical age of three score years and ten should only be of symbolic weight but sometimes, to me and some of my contemporaries, it appears to have more significance. So I offer these suggestions to...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on taxi drivers #2
I’ve written before about conversations with taxi drivers, and I happened to meet a couple of interesting ones recently. On my way home in a taxi after one of my multifarious medical appointments, I began chatting about nothing in particular as is my wont. The driver...
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