The Godfather: Peter Corris on Sir Walter Scott
When I was doing English II at Melbourne University in 1960 we had to sit one exam for the poetry component and another on the prose works. Swot that I was, I memorised reams of poetry (we had to identify excerpts), tackled all the novels before the year even started...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on moving house
It has been said that moving house can be a stressful event, not far behind a marriage breakup or a death in the family. Having moved so many times in three states and the ACT, Jean and I have no fears of such an impact; however, after being in our present house for...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on The Seven Pillars of Wisdom
Humphrey McQueen once claimed to have been the only person to have read Xavier Herbert’s massive novel Poor Fellow My Country (1975) from start to finish and I’ve never heard him contradicted. Some books are like that. In Woody Allen’s brilliant comedy Zelig (1983),...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on audiobooks revisited
Recently I wrote in praise of audiobooks, which I continue to consume at a rate of three or four a week – they are vital to my quality of life. Further familiarity has bred not contempt but a critique. At the risk of appearing sexist, I find readings by women...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on the 2016 AFL season, so far …
At a touch over 50 games into the 2016 season (I am writing just before the bounce of the ball to begin round 7), the AFL competition this year bids fair to be more interesting than in recent times. For the last three years it has been pretty much a matter of which...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on our changing language
Language has to change, to absorb new influences, if it is to retain its vigour. Typically, a dominant culture will have a profound effect, impacting on the subordinate society as with Norman French on Anglo-Saxon English, but it’s a two-way process – think of Hindi...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on editors
In a writing career of more than 40 years I’ve had dealings with dozens, perhaps scores, of publishers’ editors. Some have been excellent, some good, some just all right and a few terrible. I can’t remember much about the editors of the handful of academic books I...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on Robbery Under Arms
I wonder how many people now read Robbery Under Arms, published by Thomas Alexander Browne under the pseudonym Rolf Boldrewood in 1882. Not many, I suspect. The book was very popular in its day and remained so through the 20th century. It was filmed a number of times...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on photographs
I’m no photographer. I’ve never taken a photo that was worth anything more than a record of who was where, when. I know what a good photograph looks like – how the subject has been arranged, an expression caught, the light captured. There is one of my three daughters...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on as-told-to autobiographies Part 3
Actor Bill Hunter had come off a run of three highly successful films – Strictly Ballroom (1992), Muriel’s Wedding (1994) and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994) – and his agent thought the time had come for an autobiography. Bill had become known as the ‘voice of...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on as-told-to autobiographies Part 2
In April 1998 Captain Ken Blyth, a Scot and an experienced and respected merchant mariner, was in command of a tanker transporting thousands of tons of fuel through the South China Seas. The vessel, named the Petro Ranger, was boarded by pirates, diverted to a secure...
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