I had a Tintin period between 1966 and 1976. In 1966, I started a French course at the Alliance Française in Sydney and thought the Belgian series would help. I was right. My first title was L’Affaire Tournesol, which I enjoyed immensely. I went on to buy 18 titles, all of which I have read several times.
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Janice Fiamengo was once a true believer, completing a PhD with specialization in feminist literature and theory. Her reading as a university student convinced her that women had been unjustly oppressed for centuries, and that empowered women would lead their societies into a better future. Then she confronted the reality of female rage, false claims, the denial of merit, shattered families, and heartbroken fathers. She saw young men blatantly discriminated against in academic hiring. She came to see that feminism is a false god that leads women to hate by telling them that they are victims. She has spent the past decade alerting men and women to its dangers.
In these richly-supported chapters, Fiamengo shows why feminism has nothing to do with gender equality. It is a radical ideology that seeks sexual license, unearned economic privileges, and freedom from adult accountability for women. It enforces economic servitude, shame, and legal disempowerment for men. It impugns male goodness while excusing female wrongdoing; even worse, it encourages women to be their worst selves while telling men that they can never be good enough. Feminism thus destroys the very thing it claims to seek: true reciprocity between the sexes.
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Topics of Conversation by Miranda Popkey
It’s difficult to understand, on this assessment, how anyone could be entertained by such writing. Nevertheless, they are. On Amazon, there are six 5-star reviews and ten 1-star reviews. The 1-star reviews agree with Joomi Kim. I recommend Joomi Kim’s channel.
I had not heard of Russell Guy before reading this essay. Two things strike me in this engaging reflection. First, he tells the story of the writer struggling to have his writing known in a time when ideology predominates over truth and worth. Second, he presents a rebalancing of the narrative about European settlement and its effect on Aboriginal people. The inevitable historical meeting was not one-sided, and Christianity is given its rightful place. I’ve noted the titles of his two novels with the intention of reading them.
*****
Russell Guy: ‘Two things of which I’m certain: a nation that rejects its Christian foundation will go the way of Great Britain, and fiction that focuses on the spiritual consequences of individual lives can effect its redemption.
Russell Guy, Quadrant, Jul 08 2026
Adapted from talks given by the author at the Alice Springs Public Library and Winton Writers Festival in June 2026.
I’m interested in spirituality and modern Australian fiction because that’s how my writing has developed and been influenced. The last three verses of Henry Lawson’s ‘The Good Samaritan’, written in 1904, is, I believe, because he was so often desperately in need of one, a classic example:
‘Once on a time there lived a man,’
But he has lived alway,
And that gaunt, good Samaritan
Is with us here to-day;
He passes through the city streets
Unnoticed and unknown,
He helps the sinner that he meets —
His sorrows are his own.
He shares his tucker on the track
When things are at their worst
(And often shouts in bars outback
For souls that are athirst).
To-day I see him staggering down
The blazing water-course,
And making for the distant town
With a sick man on his horse.
He’ll live while nations find their graves
And mortals suffer pain —
When colour rules and whites are slaves
And savages again.
And, after all is past and done,
He’ll rise up, the Last Man,
From tending to the last but one —
The good Samaritan.’
Verse as good as any Bob Dylan has written.
In 1978, I wrote a story, published in Tracks surfing magazine, called What’s Rangoon to You is Grafton to Me. I adapted it to radio for Sydney’s 2JJ and it crossed-over to Radio National. Since then, it’s been pirated via the Internet and a perpetual link at the ABC.
Rangoon contains glimpses into New Age spirituality, with fragments of Christianity and Islam, as the anonymous protagonist, driving all-night from Brisbane to Sydney, ponders the Second Coming of “you know Who”, while jellyfish flap across the Pacific Highway in a nod to surrealism.
Some positive news for authors.
Thriller author Lee Child sells millions of books per year. Few authors sell more books. I was immediately interested in the video below that challenges some of the rules most editors and book experts prescribe for beginning writers – and there are many on the internet – because I’m sceptical of some. One rule I think is overdone is the ‘show, don’t tell’ rule. Lee Child thinks so, too. This video is one of a series that Child has done for the BBC on writing.
Love in the Counterculture, Book 5 in my Sixties Series, has been released on Amazon in paperback and ebook and on many other internet platforms.
By coincidence with Joomi Kim’s latest video (see below), Quillette has just posted an interview with Benedict Bekeld, author of Oikophobia: Our Western Self-Hatred, the book at the centre of much discussion.
Apart from the gushing over Richard Armitage/John Thorton, for which I have little feeling, I found this a very interesting presentation that came out of the blue on my feed. I agree with the presenter. North and South, the television series, based on Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel of the same name, is one of the best of its type. Richard Armitage and Daniela Denby-Ashe are perfect in the roles of John Thornton and Margaret Hale, whose lips are mesmerising. As for Fitzwilliam Darcy, I think there’s enough in Pride and Prejudice to suggest he would have been pretty tough as a landowner.