‘Rethinking “on”: Sitting and listening to Wright’ by Tony Hughes-d’Aeth

About this episode

Tony Hughes-d’Aeth reviews Geordie Williamson's defense of Alexis Wright's literary approach.

This week on The ABR Podcast, Tony Hughes-d’Aeth reviews ‘On Alexis Wright’ by Geordie Williamson. Hughes-d’Aeth notes that Williamson mounts a spirited defence of Alexis Wright against what he terms ‘Australian philistinism’, in which the reader expects literature to ‘tell us stuff, neatly and efficiently’. Instead, Williamson suggests, Wright compels readers to ‘suspend their assumptions around what literature is or should be’. Hughes-d’Aeth commends Williamson for opening up Wright’s work: ‘More than anything,’ he observes, ‘Williamson writes in a way that makes you want to read Alexis Wright’. Tony Hughes-d’Aeth is the Chair of Australian Literature at the University of Western Australia and the Director of the Westerly Centre. He is the author of Like Nothing on this Earth: A literary history of the wheatbelt, published by the University of Western Australia Publishing, which won the Walter McRae Russell Prize for best work of Australian literary criticism in 2019. Here is Tony Hughes-d’Aeth with ‘Rethinking “on”: Sitting and listening to Wright’, published in the April issue of ABR.

People in this episode

Host: Tony Hughes-d’Aeth

Topics covered

• literature
• Australian literature
• literary criticism
• Alexis Wright
• Geordie Williamson
• cultural commentary

Keywords

• Tony Hughes-d’Aeth
• Geordie Williamson
• Alexis Wright
• literary criticism
• Australian literature
• Westerly Centre
• Walter McRae Russell Prize

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: University of Western Australia, Westerly Centre, University of Western Australia Publishing

Books & works: On Alexis Wright, Like Nothing on this Earth: A literary history of the wheatbelt

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