- Title
- The problem of belonging : Contested country in Australian local history
- Creator
- Bongiorno, Frank; Eklund, Erik
- Date
- 2014
- Type
- Text; Journal article
- Identifier
- http://researchonline.federation.edu.au/vital/access/HandleResolver/1959.17/164503
- Identifier
- vital:13045
- Identifier
- ISBN:1839-5333
- Abstract
- There is a moment in travel writer Bill Bryson’s account of his travels in Australia, Down Under, when he comments on the large number of local histories he encounters in second‐hand bookshops. They ‘never fail to amaze,’ he reports, ‘if only because they show you what a remarkably self‐absorbed people the Australians are. I don’t mean that as a criticism. If the rest of the world is going to pay them no attention, then they must do it themselves surely.’ He continues: ‘There were hundreds of books ... about things that could never possibly have been of interest to more than a handful of people. It’s quite encouraging that these books exist, but somehow faintly worrying as well.’ Bryson doesn’t explain any further why it worries him, but he then goes on to review with genuine admiration a book he found among these volumes (126‐127).
- Publisher
- New Scholar
- Relation
- New Scholar: An International Journal of the Humanities, Creative Arts and Social Sciences Vol. 3, no. 1 (2014), p. 39-54
- Rights
- https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0
- Rights
- Copyright © The Author(s)
- Rights
- Open Access
- Rights
- This metadata is freely available under a CCO license
- Subject
- 1999 Other Studies in Creative Arts and Writing; 2005 Literary Studies; Contested country; Australia; Local history; Belonging
- Full Text
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