Literature, Literary Criticism
Book Details

Readings/Writings

Greg Dening

Greg Dening has prepared a collection of wonderfully accessible reflections on the meaning and significance of the acts of reading and writing.

Opinion

‘Dening writes lyrically and intimately about the beach, the arts of reading, writing and remembering, and the need for imagination in the search for truth. He raises big issues fearlessly and responsibly. He writes with compassion, imagination and care. These fine writings are the work of an elegant essayist, a gifted storyteller . . . ‘ (Mark Tredinnick, Australian, 27/12/98)

‘Everything I have ever read by Greg Dening has impressed me with its expansive intelligence, its scholarly grace, its lucid, often lyrical, prose and above all its deeply personal resonances.’ (Debra Adelaide, Sydney Morning Herald, 13/3/98)

About this Title

The erotics of reading for me—its moments of trembling pleasure—lie in those times when I realise that what I am reading is just what I was about to say.

Reading is a dance on the beaches of the mind, writes Greg Dening. His reading-dances are about the pain of cross-cultural encounters, of loomings beyond the horizons of discipline, gender and race, of the pleasures of a hundred texts. In Readings/Writings his aim is to cultivate our imaginations so that we might see further, understand more deeply and hear more acutely.

This book opens with Dening’s extraordinary piece, ‘Memorial’, a deeply moving reading of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC. The V-shaped, angled, polished, black stone wall bears nothing but the names of the thousands of American servicemen who died in the Vietnam War. Dening’s profound yet lucid reflections on the meanings contained in this stark, simple memorial set the tone for the book.

The subjects providing the matter for Dening’s reflections are varied indeed. Dance with him as he writes of Paul Gauguin’s painting Riders on the Beach; of Vasco de Balboa standing in the tidal mud of the Gulf of San Miguel and claiming the South Seas for his master; of a book about Simpson and his donkey and the making of myth; of stone axes and ethnography; of the Endeavour replica, of ‘discovery’, and of books about Captain Cook.

These inspired and inspiring meditations on the meaning of the acts of both reading and writing demonstrate, as does all Dening’s work, his generosity of spirit, his sacred sense of the past, and his willingness to make himself vulnerable. His writings are as much performances as are his readings. Tears, laughter and the resolve to change the consequences of the past will be their applause.

About the Author

The author:

Greg Dening is Adjunct Professor at the Centre for Cross-Cultural Research at the Australian National University, Canberra. His many books include Mr Bligh’s Bad Language, acclaimed as ‘magical realism’; The Death of William Gooch, a ‘fascinating combination of narrative history, personal reflections and critical “after-meditation”’; Performances, full of ‘mystery and allure’.

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978-0-522-84841-0