Past Programs
Film - 2008
Hunter S. Thompson in words and on film Read Transcript
23/10/2008
There are some phrases and concepts that are forever enshrined in the mythos of a writer. For the iconoclastic Hunter S. Thompson, it's Gonzo journalism, freak power and fear and loathing. Since his suicide in 2005, there have been many memoirs, many of them authored by his friends keeping the mythology of the cult writer alive. But when it comes to a subject as complex as Hunter S.Thompson, there's always room for more.
Obscene: the literary world of Barney Rosset
19/08/2008
American entrepreneur and publisher Barney Rosset mounted landmark, and ultimately successful, legal battles for free speech over the right to publish an uncensored version of Lady Chatterley's Lover and over Henry Miller's controversial novel Tropic of Cancer. He introduced Americans to writers such as Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco and Harold Pinter and published many of the writers of the Beat generation, including William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac. Filmmakers Neil Ortenberg and Daniel O'Connor have recorded the achievements of this passionate, and at times infamous, crusader for free expression in their documentary Obscene.
Upton Sinclair
10/04/2008
The success of the film There Will Be Blood has brought the work of American writer Upton Sinclair back to public attention. There Will Be Blood is loosely based on Sinclair's book Oil!, written in 1927. Well known in the early part of the 20th century, Upton Sinclair wrote more than 90 books, the most famous of which was his 1906 novel The Jungle, which dealt with conditions in the US meat packing industry and caused a public uproar. Don Anderson joins Ramona Koval to discuss this early 20th century writer who once had a much more prominent literary and public profile.
Paul Auster and the writer's mind Read Transcript
09/04/2008
Coincidence is a strong theme in Paul Auster's screenplays and fiction.
In his novel, The Brooklyn Follies, we follow the lonely character Nathan Glass as he writes a book about human follies. As a life insurance salesman, he's certainly been exposed to many examples of folly.
While he's collecting the material for his book, he wanders the streets of Brooklyn and he bumps into his beloved nephew. And through a series of coincidences his life takes a new shape.
The novel begins with Nathan Glass saying he was looking for a place to die and someone recommended Brooklyn. But he doesn't die there, in fact he finds life.
The Book Show's Sarah L'Estrange spoke to Paul Auster when he was in Melbourne recently, and asked him what it is about Brooklyn that helps Nathan rediscover life.
Ian McEwan
07/03/2008
Ian McEwan has written a number of acclaimed novels, as well as screenplays, a stage play, children's fiction and an oratorio. His 2001 novel Atonement was made into a successful feature film and his most recent novel On Chesil Beach was shortlisted for the 2007 Booker Prize.
Queen of Fashion: Marie Antoinette Read Transcript
01/01/2008
The American writer Caroline Weber talks to the Book Show about her book Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution. It is a biography told through wardrobe that captures the extravagance of Versailles and the political backlash against a monarch who played a life-long game of expensive dress-ups while her people starved – and then received the ultimate nip'n'tuck at the guillotine.
Caroline Weber joins Michael Gurr from a New York studio.
