The Godfather: Peter Corris on revisiting old favourites
People re-read books. Jean claims that for many years she re-read Wuthering Heights every couple of years and I have no reason to doubt her. I cannot say how many times I’ve re-read Somerset Maugham’s short stories or Hemingway’s story ‘Fifty Grand’ or the first...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on what makes a writer
What makes a writer write? I don’t mean a writer of music or poetry, plays or screenplays. I haven’t the faintest idea what moves them. I mean people who put words together to form sentences that end up as stories, short or long, or novels. My observations also apply,...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on travelling overseas
I recently compiled a list of the countries I’ve been to since leaving Australia for the first time at the age of 25. This was probably about the average age to travel overseas for an Australian in search of something back then, but far later than for some of my...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on the umbrellas of Newtown
Spring, more than winter, is umbrella time in Sydney. You might walk out on a sunny morning and get wet ten minutes later. You might take shelter, have a coffee and have to put your sunnies on as you start out and run for cover before you get home. Happily, in...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
Where were you when you first heard Sgt Pepper …? The question doesn’t have the same weight as: Where were you when JFK was shot? But for those interested in popular music it has some resonance. The date was 1 June 1967 and I was a PhD student at the ANU. In those...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on holidays
Holidays away from home were not a feature of my childhood. My father worked 50 weeks a year and there was never any spare money. We had no family car until I was into my teens, and then it was an old Vauxhall soft top, which needed constant maintenance to keep...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on gambling
I’m not what you’d call a gambling man. My betting amounts to participation in an AFL tipping competition – $30 per season – an occasional $2.20 lottery ticket and a couple of small each-way bets on the Melbourne Cup. My total gambling outlay in a year wouldn’t amount...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on an ABC of crime writing
A year or more ago, in an idle hour, I came up with the idea of writing an ABC of crime fiction. It wasn’t intended as a ‘how to’ exercise, there are enough of those around, but as a survey of the elements, themes and ideas central to crime fiction. I wrote a...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on AFL speak
The wittiest piece of innuendo I know from a sports commentator belongs to the legendary English cricket pundit John Arlott. When summarising the action in a county game, Arlott went through the list of bowlers and came to Cunis, an indifferent medium-pace man. ‘As...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on keeping a diary
I first began keeping a diary in London in 1970. I was there on a post-doctoral travelling fellowship from the ANU to continue my research into aspects of Pacific history. I rented a room in a flat on Brompton Road in South Kensington. The lessee of the flat, on the...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on Sherlock Holmes
Recently, one of my daughters, knowing of my enjoyment of the Sherlock Holmes novels and stories, gave me a DVD of episodes in the first of the 2010 BBC TV series Sherlock. She said it was an update. I was sceptical. More of that later. I’d read Conan Doyle in my...
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