The Godfather: Peter Corris on writing his final book
With Win, Lose or Draw from Allen & Unwin published on 3 January this year, I have produced my last book. Early reviews and notices suggest that it is in no way inferior to the 41 others in the Hardy series. So why stop? Certainly not because I tired of writing...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on as-told-to autobiographies Part 1
I’ve been commissioned to work on the autobiographies and memoirs of notable people six times. Five of these projects were completed with the books being published and one was aborted. Here are some notes on these exercises. I’ve written several times about working...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on the things people say
There are things people say that stick with you – that you puzzle over, cherish, laugh at or adopt as your own for certain situations. I offer a few that have come my way. My mother, who was not given to philosophical pronouncements, once said of some behaviour...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on running
Fred Hollows started me running. At a party he poked my soft belly and told me I’d be dead before my time unless I lost weight and got fit. I felt mortified and challenged. I’d never been much of a runner – not particularly quick over the sprints and with no endurance...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on going blind
One of the few books in my parents’ house – the collection was kept in a hallway cupboard – was an edition of Henry Lawson’s short stories. Its publication was somehow sponsored by the Sun newspaper. I have no idea how my parents acquired it. Neither...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on chance encounters
It’s a cliché that lives can be changed by chance encounters. Many people meet their life partners through chance encounters it is said. I didn’t; apparently we were set up. But I’ve never ceased to be thankful. I owe my survival beyond, say, the age of 50, to a...The Godfather: Peter Corris on book launches
An unusual book launch was held recently at Gleebooks, unusual in that three books were celebrated – novels by Michael Wilding and James Murray and a book of mine comprising three novellas. It was also unusual in that we had no launcher as a result of organisational...The Godfather: Peter Corris on writing columns
This is my 80th column for the NRB and time to reflect on the experience of column writing. I’ve had a somewhat similar gig once before – as a TV columnist for the National Times in what proved to be its dying days. It was money for jam; I was provided with a...The Godfather: Peter Corris on golf
A number of creative people have played golf. British Poet Laureate John Betjeman did and wrote a poem about it, the first line of which reads: ‘How straight it flew, how long it flew’. Betjeman, it is said, was more interested in how far he could hit the...The Godfather: Peter Corris remembers friend and co-writer Roger Keesing
I’ve worked as a writer with some justly well-known and extraordinary people, like ophthalmologist Fred Hollows, feisty euthanasia campaigner Philip Nitschke and larrikin actor Bill Hunter. Much less well-known but equally extraordinary was anthropologist Roger...The Godfather: Peter Corris on talking books
I wonder if there are any authors who listen to their own work when it appears in the form of a talking book? Possibly the real egoists do. About twenty of my books have had the treatment, mostly Cliff Hardys, but at least one each in the Crawley and the Browning...
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