Has anyone here read any good Australian literature? As someone from Australia, all the aus-lit I seemed to read in high school was about aborigines and was boring af
>>7747317
Yeah I don't understand why but Australian lit is completely limited to Aboriginal shit or WW1 books.
My goal is to write a novel about life in Townsville that portrays the place in its truest light. Racism will play a large part but it will be presented objectively to show how little it really matters one way or the other.
What do you mean it's about Abos? You mean like how in America cowboys/settlers vs Indians was often wrote about, or just the life and times of Abos?
Voss by Patrick White I believe is Australian.
>>7747424
I mean the Australian lit that they only seem to care about and/or make you read in high school is about the struggles of aboriginals against the oppressive white men, etc.
I've never had anyone mention Australian literature that deals with themes other than racism. Like American literature is obviously very diverse in terms of it's content
>>7747427
I'll check it out, thanks
>>7747317
Yeah man, I fucking hated my last two years of high school. All this Aboriginal bullshit was terrible.
>>7747424
Like the other guy said, we were forced to read books/watch movies about how Aboriginals were oppressed and were treated like slaves, and how the Aboriginals did heroic acts like win a land rights claim and shit. I don't know how long they've been pulling this apologetic shit and forcing it onto students, but I'm fucking sick of it. And they're all fucking terrible. The only proper literature book we read in high school was Catcher in the Rye, and that was also terrible.
Oh, and they fucking insist on us calling them 'Indigenous Australians', instead of 'Aboriginals'.
White Australians fucked up a bit and made some worthless fucking race angry. Who the fuck cares? For 40,000 years they've had this land and did absolutely nothing with it, while the rest of the fucking world was innovating in science and art, the Aboriginals, just like the Africans, were still in their huts making shitty stick figures on rocks.
I absolutely despise my education of literature in high school, I had to read all the books I wanted on my own, I never had the chance to enjoy reading all these books and study them in school.
Fuck Aboriginals.
Australian art in general is 90% of the time caught up in its own Australianism
the outback and Aboriginals are treated as some super interesting mystical subjects when really they're just boring
Australia the film is the most egregious example of this
>>7748124
tbqh that article is just as sensational as Aboriginal shit about how majestic their culture was.
diginies were savage and DeMause has some pretty refreshing shit to say but not all of it is truth. There was a debate on ABC RN a while ago and it was him vs some Aboriginal lady who made claims that abs were not in fact nomadic and they made villages etc. they were both as wacky as each other just on opposite ends.
>australian literature
>>7748185
>>7747317
Peter Carey is a very talented writer.
In all seriousness, Morris Gleitzman is one of the best Children's Authors alive today.
>>7748085
>White Australians fucked up a bit and made some worthless fucking race angry. Who the fuck cares? For 40,000 years they've had this land and did absolutely nothing with it, while the rest of the fucking world was innovating in science and art, the Aboriginals, just like the Africans, were still in their huts making shitty stick figures on rocks.
Well I guess here's a book you should read
I realise i think i just don't like Australian lit because I don't like Australian culture much, it's kind of boring to read about, maybe because I'm living it, and maybe because it's only a couple hundred years old, whereas other countries have a thousand years of history, if not more
>>7749450
are we children on this board though?
>>7749508
I think there is a certain type of skill required to write Children's Literature, and there are definitely /lit/snobs who appreciate it more than other literary artforms.
>>7749467
Dis shit interesting yo.
A Late Education is a great book about being a journalist at war, friendship, and the post-war literary scene, with added excruciating adolescent sex life.
>>7747427
Patrick White is a god-tier writer. I read pic related once a year at least.
>>7749546
forgot pic.
>>7747379
>Yeah I don't understand why but Australian lit is completely limited to Aboriginal shit or WW1 books
this guy knows
On The Beach by Nevil Shute is good. Also Jasper Jones is pre good
>>7748085
>falling for the technical progress meme
mein gott
>>7747379
>auslit is shit and all about abos
>I am writing a book about abos
wut? for real?
>>7748085
doesnt even come up in tasmania bro. they're all dead.
I saw an abo once in the five years i lived there and he was on holiday from Melbourne.
>>7748124
>noble savage
yeah, it's a meme
>>7749507
australian culture is just meth and skylines and clubs. there really isnt anymore to it. but not even in an intellectual way. just literally work at maccas to afford a skyline, go to the gym, not in a serious arnie way, just to take selfies and do reps and pick up. not even in an interesting exploratory way like the 60s california scifi writers, just meth for the sake of being a cunt. and clubs for stupid men to pick up equally retarded women.
the rest is just boring memes like our politics basically follows american politics directly.
>>7747317
look australians are so retarded that literature written about australia was only ever published in the UK. because australians are too retarded to read about their own culture. the great australian loneliness by ernestine hill, daisy bets and les murray's freddy neptune are all about australia. freddy neptune captures the australian idiom very well. it just wont be taught in any australian schools or universities because it is literally too hard for even our literature professors to grasp. there's also germaine greer who had to move to england and publish most of her work there(actual historical literature professor) because australians are fucking retarded. she actually writes really good stuff. it's just that people get hung up on her lel feminism maymay lol tldr wont read because femicunt. but I highly advise you to watch her seminar on her paper about the role of women in Shakespearean england.
>>7749568
it will be about abos but it will be more about how futile the complaining of abos is, you'll see just you wait
>>7749568
>australian culture is just meth and skylines and clubs
lold at how accurate this section was
Why can't we do something fucking interesting?
>Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck. It lives on other people's ideas, and, although its ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are often taken by surprise.
>>7749450
Shout out to Paul Jennings
>>7749584
dont let me discourage you. writing is hard enough. but i just dont see this as being a revelation. everyone has seen a coon camp. in perth it's so bad the abos all move into a new house then trash it, start camp fires in the loungeroom, smash out the windows and fuck up the yard. they're just extremely impoverished. compare them to the irish perhaps? the irish were dirt poor. came here, worked hard, stayed poor as fuck, were banned from education until edmund rice and Catherine McCauley. still worked hard. abos just drink and fuck and beat their women up.
>>7749607
Shit, I used to love his books as a kid. I'd totally forgotten about him. I didn't know he was Australian at the time so all that stuff about chooks and thongs just seemed like part of his absurdist style. I should read some again now and see if it's still as funny as I remember it being.
Half abo here who cucked my nigger side and started with the Greeks
AMA
>>7749467
>we built parks and shit
>>7747317
>>7748085
Damn, all this salt. How many times were you made to watch Rabbit-Proof Fence? I think I got it at least four times.
If you want a real book on colonialism read The Fifth Head of Cerberus. It's GOAT science-fiction and you don't have to feel ashamed about reading it because it's by Gene Wolfe.
>>7749647
Dont know for sure but it sounds like it could be Riders in the Chariot or The burnt Ones.
Greg Egan, one of the currently biggest names in hard science-fiction, is from Perth and still lives there.
But he's an almost Pynchon-level recluse so he may as well live in Thailand.
>>7749654
>tfw you find out they were saving the children from being raped to death by their families
all this liberal guilt. even the ones who did experience institutional abuse still had it way better than living with their families. the noble savage shit always excludes the fact that their only form of entertainment was weirdo violent tribal gang rapes. the marriage ceremonies involved the husband getting ceremonially cucked by every man in the tribe.
>>7749658
>Greg Egan
cool, I will go read him.
>>7749665
Exactly
What would have seriously happened if we left the abos to their own devices? Would we have a bunch of uncivilised "people" running around naked hunting animals and having tribal wars in the outback? And we'd just live alongside these people?
What other choice did we have but to civilise them?
>>7747427
Yeah he's Australia's Joyce, no one here reads him though, pleb central desu
>>7747686
You want serious or light-hearted stuff? I remember Mathew Reilly being okay when I was in high school, still a bit "girls > boys" and "all cultures are equally valuable" schtick but his stuff is mostly Indiana Jones type adventure themes.
Nevil Shute is based.
I think it just goes to show we don't have any real talent directing the nation towards excellence, we are just a reaction to what we see in front of our eyes and trying to prove how distinct we are from other more established cultures we don't see the full merit in. That is really it, we just have sport and the occasional comedic sledging against more established thoughts. What else do you want there to be?
>>7749762
Reilly was a fun author, lots of explosions and action going on, nothing literary but always something entertaining.
>>7749450
>>7749607
Australia seems to produce a lot of great children's authors. Tons of books I remember from being a kid, all written by aussies.
>>7749787
i think this is it. as a nation we strive for medicority which is a god damned shame since even though we do that we're probably one of the most developed countries in the world. a bit of drive and direction will bring us a long bloody way, but there are too many fucking useless anti-intellectual bogans and anti-boundary pushing weak cunts all over the country. We used to produce a whole range of striking figures, ranging from intellectuals like John Monash to bloody bushrangers like Ned Kelly. Nobody in this country has any vision anymore it's bloody pitiful.
>>7748085
Why Warriors Lay Down and Die
Paul Jennings and Morris Gleitzman.
I loved Worry Warts, Thought it was an awesome story.
>>7749436
Awwwww shet I remember this
