We publish quality short stories, poetry, extracts from forthcoming novels, and articles and essays on topics of social, environmental and cultural significance.ISSUE NO. 115
SUMMER 2008
EDITORIAL
Gina Mercer
Since moving to Hobart I have studied a simple form of meditation. I make no claim to being a dedicated practitioner but find it an intriguing exercise. One of the key principles of meditative philosophies is the dialogue between attachment and detachment. About how involved you allow yourself to become in your personal turmoils and ecstasies. And what is the personal anyway when it’s possible to conceive of the individual as connected to every organism on the planet?
The essayists in this issue engage with these concepts, taking different perspectives on the question of the construction of the personal in works of fiction, memoir, essai and biography.
Robert Dessaix and Danielle Wood converse energetically about the complexities of writing ‘a life’: your own or that of another person (or both at the same time in the case of Dessaix).
Elisabeth Hanscombe puzzles over the problem of writing a memoir when confronted by obstructive siblings. She asks: what right does a memoirist have to construct, for public consumption, personal childhood memories starring reluctant family members?
Peter Skrzynecki writes about the many ways in which his migration to Australia at the age of four constructed his sense of self. Acquiring a foreign tongue (there’s an intimate metaphor) is an intensely personal experience, not easy to achieve with any degree of detachment.
You will be reading this in summer. Now that’s a time when meditative detachment can be severely tested by all the powerful swirling narratives attached to family, Christmas, holidays, heat and New Year’s resolutions. May you achieve just the levels of detachment that you desire – and may the words of all our Island authors contribute to your enjoyment of
summer’s inevitable meditations.
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