Everything happens somewhere

A setting is not merely a random place where people meet and action happens, according Meanjin contributor, Chris Womersley.

“The setting is intrinsic to that action,” he says.

“Our world lives in us as much as we live in it.”

Womersley’s piece ‘No Place Like Home’  is featured in the recently released spring edition of Meanjin, the penultimate edition before its 70th birthday which focuses on what it take to make a city.

“We often talk about a city as not just having a character, but being one,” says Meanjin editor, Sophie Cunningham.

“I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it takes to make a city – and, more to the point, keep one alive over the centuries,” she says.

In looking at the theme of the city, Meanjin covers eclectic ground from photos taken at Punk venues around Melbourne in the late 70s to a look at Doveton, one of Melbourne’s first Housing Commission suburbs and even ‘logophobia’, which examines the City of Melbourne’s ‘M’ logo.

 “Often as not it’s precisely the buildings and bars and lifestyle that Tourism Victoria promotes in its ads that are most undermined by government policy,” Cunningham observes.

“This gap between Melbourne’s sense of itself – We’re livable! Creative! Great live-music scene! Sophisticated little bars! – and policies that make it increasingly hard for the city to live up to the hype is highlighted by Michael Harden in Unique and Deplorable: Regulating Drinking in Victoria.

Harden’s essay looks at the history of, and recent changes to, liquor licensing laws and the fallout for pubs, music and bars.

In other writings, Matthew Ricketson considers long form journalism and the legacy of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood; Nonie Sharp looks at the legend of The Little Wanderers; Anthony Macris pays tribute to that great film, All About Eve; and Brian McFarlane celebrates the work of three Australian women film directors – Sarah Watt, Rachel Ward and Ana Kokkinos. George Dunford diagnoses Second Novel Syndrome; Maria Takolander comes to understand the lessons she’s learnt from literature; John Potts defends the book form from declarations of death; Peter Mitchell recalls a painful and uncertain AIDS diagnosis and Rachel Buchanan tries to fall in step with her rapping brothers, ‘da xxxclusiv brevrin’.

www.meanjin.com.au