Past Programs
Arts and Culture - 2007
Writing the West Wing Read Transcript
28/12/2007
The intelligence of the TV drama The West Wing is one of the more surprising aspects of television over the past five years or more, in contrast with the abundance of reality TV 'filler'. A show like The West Wing is a clear example of a direct attempt to glimpse the inner machinery of US politics.
The Book Show asks, what's happened in American TV? Are we seeing the US networks using their space, their reach, to allow some sort of genuine public debate and airing of issues of increasing concern inside and outside the country? And why aren't we seeing this sort of depth of TV scriptwriting in Australian TV shows, other than in comedy and satire?
Eli Attie, one of the West Wing scriptwriters, discusses how a sustained act of intelligent literacy survived on network TV. He is in conversation with West Wing addict former NSW Premier Bob Carr and cultural commentator Kath Albury.
The Benjamin Andrew Footpath Library
20/12/2007
The Book Show visits a mobile library which caters to the homeless people of Sydney.
For most people, the word 'library' conjures a quiet, indoor space, filled with books organised meticulously along Dewey decimal lines. A place to borrow books - as long as you hand over details of your identity, and a promise to bring them back.
But imagine a library which inverts all that: a noisy, outdoor affair where the books are different every time you visit, where no one wants to know your last name, and you're allowed to take books away, and never bring them back.
The Benjamin Andrew Footpath Library in Sydney is all that -- it's a mobile library that looks after the reading needs of the city's homeless people.
For the Book Show, Catherine Freyne paid a visit.
If you'd like to donate to the library or contribute in some other way, you can contact founder Sarah Garnett by writing to us here at
Listener Enquiries
ABC Radio National
GPO Box 9994
Sydney NSW 2001
Or by email: info_rn@your.abc.net.au
Make sure you mark your correspondence to the attention of Sarah Garnett.
Desert writers' walk ... the Larapinta Trail
17/07/2007
Travel writer Robyn Davidson says that she was transformed by her experience of trekking across the desert.
Big open spaces are inspirational -- and don't they just make you want to write?
Well, Into the Blue, which organises creative getaways, recently took a group of writers into the central Australian desert for a week of writing and walking along the Larapinta Trail.
For the Book Show, Sarah L'Estrange spoke to Jan Cornall, the desert writers guide, and Rowena Harding Smith, a psychologist who was one of the walkers on this getaway.
Jan begins by describing the Larapinta Trail.
The words and letters portfolio - Arts Minister Senator George Brandis
10/05/2007
In this election year, we've invited the Federal Arts Minister and the Shadow Arts Minister to tell us what's in store for the publishing industry, and our literary culture, should their respective party win the election.
There's no doubt that writing is the backbone of the arts; and books are a defining part of our cultural landscape. Yet in discussions about arts policy, books and publishing are given scant attention.
Joining us today in our Canberra studio is the Federal Minister for Arts and Sport, Senator George Brandis.
New-look Brisbane libraries
08/05/2007
You wouldn't normally expect to see huge plasma TV screens or Xbox games in libraries, but libraries are in the process of a revolution as they harness new information technologies and model themselves on airport lounges to maintain their civic importance.
For the Book Show, Sarah L'Estrange visited Brisbane's latest library redevelopments which sit opposite each other on the river: the Brisbane City Council Brisbane Square Library which has a Gibsonesque Neuromancer feel; and the State Library of Queensland.
She began her tour at the State Library, which was redeveloped at the same time that the Queensland Art gallery was given a facelift along with the building of the Gallery of Modern Art. The library still has its distinctive horizontal layers of concrete facing the river but the entrance facade is actually green and rather beautiful. The architect, Timothy Hill, starts by explaining the challenges of redesigning the library.
Writing the West Wing Read Transcript
04/05/2007
The intelligence of the TV drama The West Wing is one of the more surprising aspects of television over the past five years or more, in contrast with the over-abundance of reality TV 'filler'. A show like The West Wing is a clear example of a direct attempt to glimpse the inner machinery of US politics.
The Book Show asks, what's happened in American TV? Are we seeing the US networks using their space, their reach, to allow some sort of genuine public debate and airing of issues of increasing concern inside and outside the country? And why aren't we seeing this sort of depth of TV scriptwriting in Australian TV shows, other than in comedy and satire?
Eli Attie, one of the West Wing scriptwriters, discusses how a sustained act of intelligent literacy survived on network TV. He is in conversation with West Wing addict former NSW Premier Bob Carr and cultural commentator Kath Albury.
Judging a book by its cover
26/04/2007
How many love affairs with a book begin with that first glance at the cover? A book jacket can lure us in; the images, colours, even typeface speaking a subliminal language which engages the reader and suggests the pleasures that lie within.
Within the specialised world of book designers, New Yorker Chip Kidd is an acknowledged master. He's been called everything from the Elvis of the industry to a 'design demigod' and he's currently in Australia speaking at various design events around the country.
He's created covers for a long list of contemporary authors including William Boyd, John Updike, Michael Crichton and Peter Carey.
For the Book Show, he spoke to Radio National's Annie Hastwell about the relationship between author and designer.
Sarah Dunant's In the Company of the Courtesan Read Transcript
12/04/2007
The setting for Sarah Dunant's new novel In the Company of the Courtesan is 16th century Venice. It opens with the violent sack of Rome in 1527 by Spanish and German armies, and there we meet Bucino Teodoldi, a protective and clever dwarf employed by Fiammetta Bianchini, Rome's most celebrated courtesan, all of 21 years old.
Novelist, broadcaster and critic Sarah Dunant trained as a historian at Cambridge. She is known for her crime novels featuring private investigator Hannah Wolfe, and more recently for her historical novels, the first of which was The Birth of Venus.
Sarah Dunant joined the Book Show from London and starts with a reading from In the Company of the Courtesan.
Rex Butler reviews Modernism and Australia
09/04/2007
Modernism is said to have come to Australia a little late, perhaps some time around the First World War. The University of Melbourne's Miegunyah Press has recently put out an anthology taking up the story of the arrival and reception of Modernism in Australia.
Modernism and Australia: Documents on Art, Design and Architecture 1917-1967, edited by the curator Ann Stephen and the academics Andrew McNamara and Philip Goad, assembles a vast array of writings treating not only the visual arts, but architecture and design (both commercial and industrial) more generally.
The University of Queensland's Rex Butler reviews it for the Book Show.
National Biography Award winner: Jacob Rosenberg Read Transcript
28/03/2007
The National Biography Award 2007 was announced last night, and the winner, Jacob Rosenberg, joins us on the program this morning. Jacob won the prize for his book East of Time, which also won last year's NSW Premier's Literary Award for Non-Fiction.
Jacob Rosenberg has written a number of books, both prose and poetry, in English and in Yiddish, his first language. This latest book is a collection of stories he has carried in his head for a long time, stories from his childhood to his early 20s.
Jacob Rosenberg has lived in Australia since 1948. He was born in Poland, the youngest member of a working-class Jewish family. The family lived in Lodz, a city known as the Polish Manchester because of its textile industry. With the German occupation of Poland, Jacob and his family were confined to the Lodz ghetto until they were sent to Auschwitz. Within a few days of arriving there, he was the only one of his family still alive.
A big book about apples
26/03/2007
In Australia, apples are almost synonymous with Tasmania, and now a book on its contribution to agricultural history has won the University of Tasmania's prize for Best Book by a Tasmanian Publisher—awarded as part of the Tasmanian Book Prize celebrations. The book is called The Art of Apple Branding: Australian Apple Case Labels and the Industry since 1788. It's a gorgeous production, highlighting the rich and colourful artwork that adorned apple boxes and labels as far back as 1788.
Chris Cowles, the co-author of this prize-winning book joins us to discuss the production of this book which became a labour of love.
Australian gothic fiction
23/03/2007
The underbelly of the Australian psyche will be exposed today in our panel discussion on Australian gothic literature. From the early colonial writers like Marcus Clarke and Henry Lawson, to Elizabeth Jolley and Peter Carey, the Australian landscape has been transformed into a menacing character in gothic tales of colonisation and displacement.
Charles Dickens and the international copyright act
20/03/2007
Today, we look at the legacy on present day copyright laws of the debates between Mark Twain and Charles Dickens about the need for international copyright in the 19th century. This debate raged across the Atlantic between England and America before America drew up its international copyright act to protect the work of foreign writers like Dickens.
Matthew Pearl joins us to discuss this influential debate. Matthew Pearl is a visiting lecturer at the Harvard Law School, Cambridge Massachusetts, USA, and he has written two novels: The Dante Club and The Poe Shadow.
