B O O K R E L E A S E !
Erica was always going to Paris…
The young academic sets off on sabbatical leave, to pursue the famous writer and literary theorist, Jacques Simon, across Paris. It is 1991 and Simon is already ten years dead. She will uncover the hidden life of this elusive figure – the lovers, the politics, the intellectual battles – while realising her dream of living in the City of Light. Then nothing is as it seems…not Jacques Simon…not her French lover…not Paris itself…
This novel holds a special meaning for me because it was the very first novel I started writing back in 2012. In the intervening years I have come to know Erica incredibly well and really come to like her. I wish her every success!
Erica writes Paris is available direct. Email linzi@linzimurrie.com for payment details.
Retail price: $25 + Postage in Australia: $10.00.
An extract can be found here.
Peter Handke went to university in Graz to study Law, and I went to university in Graz to study Peter Handke. Well, among other things, but Peter Handke and the theory of the Periphizierung are the two subjects I remember best from my semester there. It was 1992, the siege of Sarajevo had started months before, but the massacre in Srebrenica was still three years away. Even so, the international students in Graz were already whispering ‘genocide’ in astonishment at the daily news feeds.When I arrived in late September, Steirischer Herbst, the month-long Graz arts festival, was about to begin, and one of the stars of the show (and why not?) was das Enfant terrible of German literature, Peter Handke…
Meglio porco che fascista! Immediatamente mi ricordo l’espressione comune dalla mia giovinezza «Fascist pig!» che usavamo in molte occasioni: contro i carabinieri durante manifestazioni, contro i politici della destra, contro gli studenti della destra, contro qualcuno che ha saltato la coda, e contro qualsiasi che non era d’accordo con noi. In ogni occasione il «fascist pig» era né fascista né porco. Non pensavamo che ci fossi qualsiasi differenza tra un fascista e un porco; «fascist pig» è quasi stata una parola «singola»…
The winter garden in our subtropical climate is usually more productive than the summer garden. To my eye, the winter garden is more beautiful than the summer garden. Plants last longer and the garden beds have a more ‘architectural’ quality. The brassicas, the fennel, the spring onions, the leeks and various varieties of lettuce contribute to a garden that is full of diversity, but also has a sense of complete-ness, as if everything belongs together.
biennale postscript: conversations with an architect
I just want to hug this building!
After the biennale we spend a week in the countryside north of Rome, where we have the chance to talk architecture with R, who has been designing and building for decades. R has completed a number of wonderful houses among the olive groves of Sabina, and has intriguing plans for more. He tells us about them, he tells us Australians of his admiration for the work of Glenn Murcutt.
R has a passion for sustainability and a powerful understanding of architectural history and philosophy. Much of the discussion is on the philosophical level. R talks of creativity, of how barely having enough, but never more than that, is the source of innovation: making do, finding ways to live well with whatever is at hand. A creative way of living, it is poor, he says, but ‘poor’ is not ‘misery’, it is not the desperation of the war-dispossessed, the misery of the refugee; poor is the necessary condition for innovation…
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