Outgoing editor Sophie Cunningham
Former Age A2 editor Sally Heath has been announced as the new editor of Meanjin. Heath joined Melbourne University Press (MUP) in August of this year under the title of associate publisher and takes up the role after Sophie Cunningham had her contract discontinued.
Cunningham reportedly left Meanjin after MUP chair Alan Kohler recommended the magazine move to an online only model. But there’s no mention of publishing strategy with today’s appointment. Peter Craven was just one vocal critic at the time, writing “Whatever prevaricating noises may be made by MUP or the university, it is clear that the reason for her departure was that she was unwilling to preside over the effective dissolution of a great literary institution.”
In a press release from MUP today, Heath commented “It is a great honour to be appointed editor of Meanjin. It is an exciting time to work on the journal: to stay true to its tradition while exploring imaginative options to connect with readers.”
MUP CEO Louise Adler alluded to a greater online presence in her statement today: “The opportunities are growing, not contracting, for purveyors of content who are flexible and creative. In five years time Meanjin’s forms of publication will have proliferated, not diminished. The magazine will find expression in print editions, compendiums, websites, blogs, mobile applications and other forms we cannot yet foresee.”
One of the cornerstones of Melbourne’s literary community is its bookstores. According to the City of Literature submission (pdf 5.4MB) Victoria boasts over 300 book shops. But the same submission singled out Collected Works as “unlike any other shop in the country… specialising in poetry and ideas, and is the most substantial retail outlet for poetry in Australasia, giving local literature a sense of where it sits within a global sphere”.
Like many retailers Collected Works has been struggling. Add to this a rent rise for their Nicholas Building premises and their situation looks dire. Rather than shut up shop, Collected Works is putting out a call to everyone who has browsed their store by hosting a Christmas Benefit tonight. The evening features contributions from more than 20 writers including local literary luminaries Alison Croggon, Joel Deane and Chris Wallace-Crabbe. Many more writers have donated rare works to be auctioned this evening including a donation by Andrea Goldsmith of handwritten drafts of a Dorothy Porter poem. It would make an excellent Christmas gift for any poetry lover and to the future of Australia’s literary history.
With all the talk of wikileaks, it’s easy to forget that there are other online resources that can be crowdsourced. Over at biblioklept they’ve looked at the index for Harper’s Magazine and unearthed some odd statistics.
Searching on literature, they found that product placement is very Joycean with “Minimum number of the brand names mentioned in James Joyce’s Ulysses that are still extant: 28” and the grim statistic “Percentage of American households in which no books were bought last year: 60”. For punctuation fans there’s this fun fact: “Exclamation points in Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities: 2,343”. And proof that the Bard lives on in the White House with “Number of Shakespeare’s thirty-seven plays quoted on the Senate floor last year by Robert Byrd: 37 [i.e. all of them]”.
With the festive season looming we searched the index ourselves for Christmas. There’s a warning about Christmas over-eating in this stat “Estimated number of Americans hospitalized last year for injuries involving the ingestion of Christmas ornaments: 687” and another about getting a synthetic tree if you’re a smoker “Number of seconds it takes a synthetic Christmas tree to burn: 32”.
But there’s good news for gift buyers. For less than US$40 you can live out the Christmas idyll with “Estimated cost of a partridge in a pear tree, retail: $39.95”. And if you’re unsure about sending Christmas cards, think about how much they could be worth in future generations based on this stat: “Price paid at auction in October for a 1942 Christmas card signed by Adolf Hitler: $3,025”.
And then there’s the sad tale redeemed in these two stats:
- Miles per hour of two low-flying Danish fighter jets in February when they startled a reindeer named Rudolph to death: 450
- Amount his owner, a professional Santa, was paid by the Air Force in September to buy a new Rudolph: $5,000
Douglas Adams' fame continues beyond the grave with an adaptation of his curious crime book, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency by the BBC. There’s no news of whether the ABC will pick up the series, but given Gently’s “unswerving belief in the interconnectedness of all things” it can only be a matter of time.
