The Readers of Melbourne

The Readers of Melbourne

London, 1940. Three men browse the bombed-out hull of Holland House Library. The photograph testifies at once to a city’s perseverance and also to the necessity of literature. It reveals our need—that singular reader’s need—to plunge into the world of the book, deepening reality in spite of all circumstances. People who read in public seek to engage with two authenticities at once. They live simultaneously in the their immediate surroundings—the bustling city, the chatter of cafés, the joyous trill of crowded beaches—and the vivid hum and scent of the book itself.

A year ago, keeping in mind that iconic photograph of readers in Holland House, Kevin Rabalais began making images of readers in public places. This post of Sacred Trespasses offers a variety of readers—yet only a sampling of the many I’ve encountered—in Melbourne, Australia, a UNESCO City of Literature.

Coffee Break Review: Unknown Caller

Coffee Break Review: Unknown Caller

We all know, to paraphrase Whitman, that each of us contains multitudes. Without any contradiction, we are different versions of ourselves. Debra Spark's new novel about identity and the incomprehensible other, Unknown Caller, illuminates all we can't know about ourselves and others. It rattles and thrills.

The Sacred Secret of Atheism

The Sacred Secret of Atheism

Rolando André López Torres explores Fernando Vallejo’s explosive, flinch-inducing novel The Whore of Babylon to question contempt versus mystery in religious faith and atheism:

“Here’s the key: the choice between belief and unbelief does not depend on knowledge of information; it depends on what you look for in that information, on the temperament of your hermeneutic, or interpretive lens; that is, you can choose whether to view something as mystery or as mere contradiction.”

A Golden Age of Reading

A Golden Age of Reading

There's a period—a golden age—in each reader's life when everything is new and we're convinced that there will be enough time to read everything. 

Kevin Rabalais experienced this golden age during his university studies, when he strayed to other courses' syllabi and received lessons from Tolstoy and some wise, straight-talking Jesuits.

Bread, Wine & Thou: The Wilder Dishes of Lesley Blanch

Bread, Wine & Thou: The Wilder Dishes of Lesley Blanch

We're thrilled to team up with Bread, Wine & Thou, Melbourne's newest and most beautifully designed literary periodical about food and wine culture, to present one of the featured articles from their latest issue, Maternal. 

When a Book Becomes a Portal to a Previous Self

When a Book Becomes a Portal to a Previous Self

It’s a special moment when a stranger gives you back the gift of a long-forgotten but much-loved book. It happened to me this week: a woman handed over The Men’s Club by Leonard Michaels, mentioning that she’d recently read Sylvia. “Sylvia!” I said, and a flood of memories—no, something stronger: a former me suddenly inhabiting and vying with the now-me—took over.

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Reading Around the World: Brazil, still terra incognita?

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Reading Around the World: Brazil, still terra incognita?

When the Viennese author Stefan Zweig first travelled to Brazil in 1936, he deemed the South American country “terra incognita in the cultural sense.” 

Now that we've lived with Brazil through the Olympics coverage and caught glimpses of the place and its people, we look to a variety of novels to pull us further into this diverse land.

Happy Birthday to Us!

Happy Birthday to Us!

We built this site one year ago and maintain it out of a desire to share—to share books, to trade ideas, to gush about the words that excite us and to puzzle our way through pressing, challenging ideas. The second-best thing about reading something amazing that shakes our foundations or just makes us sit back in awe is knowing that we can pass it on to others who will also feel that joy or shock or comfort or provocation.

Thank you for being our readers. We take you along every day when we visit bookstores and libraries, and we think of you with every book we pick up.

The Immensity of Worlds, or What Awaits Between the Covers

The Immensity of Worlds, or What Awaits Between the Covers

During the two years that Henry David Thoreau spent on Walden Pond, physical labors—the completion of his cabin, the cultivation of food to nourish his body—prevented much reading, the act that nourishes the spirit. “Yet,” he writes in Walden, “I sustained myself by the prospect of such reading in future.”

On My Knees (In Front of the Event)

On My Knees (In Front of the Event)

And then there are those novelists whose esteem grows with each book they fail to publish. Rumors and expectations mount. When—if—it finally appears, the book will change the way we read and write. Harold Brodkey, one of the most notorious of them all, garnered more celebrity each year, indeed each decade, that he missed deadlines for his long-awaited novel. 

Writing to Save a Life: Clarice Lispector

Writing to Save a Life: Clarice Lispector

Readers assumed it was a pseudonym. The author, some said, had to be a man. Surely it couldn’t be as simple—as complex—as it seemed: in 1943, the twenty-three-year-old Ukrainian-born Clarice Lispector, daughter of Russian-Jewish émigrés living in exile in Brazil, published a debut novel that generated the kind of literary celebrity that no longer exists. Critics and readers established a new name for this literary wonder: the author became known as nothing less than “Hurricane Clarice.” 

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