Wayne Macauley Other Stories

Reviews:
"... a writer of great purity, combining social critique, fertile imagination, and the highest aesthetic scruples.
His work is some of the best fiction Australia has to offer... the sardonic exaggerations of these stories
have such clarity of outline, and the writing is so controlled, that they have the graphic power of the very best cartoons.
Macauley's work is dark and more than tinged with melancholy; it is also often wildly funny.
Like Bail and Murnane, he is one of Australia's deadpan visionaries, a teller of tall and cerebral tales."
Owen Richardson, The Sunday Age

"... Wayne Macauley is a compelling voice in contemporary Australian literature. Other Stories, a collection of his short fiction,
showcases his willingness to see - and interrogate - aspects of Australian culture that normally pass under the radar.
Macauley is an excellent short fiction writer; this volume a miscellany that grabs and gnaws on absurd threads
of experimental suburban dreaming. Macauley is a spry and compassionate humorist of the postmodern soul.
In lamenting the marginalisation of art from politics, he writes it back into the picture."
Cameron Woodhead, The Age (Pick of the Week)
.
"... an impressive unity of vision, as well as an extraordinary - if uniquely Australian - voice.
Macauley’s prose is absolutely beautiful... eclectic, often experimental... affecting and hysterically funny.
Wayne Macauley should be recognized as one of Australia’s best living writers.
This is one of the best books by an Australian I’ve read all year."
Emmett Stinson, 3RRR Radio
(Read the full text at Emmett Stinson's blog here.
Or download an MP3 file of the radio review here.)

Wayne Macauley’s Other Stories is a much-awaited collection. Here at last Macauley’s peculiar take on the world is gathered together in short stories, satires, fables and anecdotes. Many are set in the hinterland of the outer suburbs, where big cars, big driveways, big houses and big skies make small people feel lost and strange. The familiar world seems eerie, like a Jeffrey Smart painting. His yarns of the margins are at the centre of our culture.

His short fiction has appeared for over a decade in our most prestigious literary magazines, including Meanjin, Overland, Westerly, Island and Griffith Review. As novelist and playwright he is one of our most original and challenging writers and a winner of The Age Short Story Competition. His two corrosive novels, Blueprints for a Barbed-Wire Canoe and Caravan Story, were critically acclaimed.

For anyone who thrills to a hypnotic prose style and incisive social satire, I would urge you to discover his work! - Martin Shaw, Readings Monthly

‘One Night’, in Meanjin, Vol. 62, No. 1, 2003; ‘Bohemians’, in Overland, Issue 163, Winter 2001; ‘Wilson’s Friends’, in Eureka Street, Vol. 12, No. 8, 2002; ‘A Short Report From Happy Valley’, in Westerly, Vol. 45, 2000; ‘Simpson And His Donkey Go Looking For The Inland Sea’, in Westerly, Vol. 46, 2001; ‘A Hair Of The Dog’, in Overland, Issue 173, Summer 2003; ‘Jack The Dancer Dies’, in Meanjin, Vol. 59, No. 2, 2000 (also anthologised in Best Australian Stories 2001, edited by Peter Craven, Black Inc, 2001); ‘Man And Tree’, Island, Issue 112, Autumn 2008; ‘The Bridge’, in Griffith Review, Summer 2006-2007; ‘The Streets Are Too Wide’, in Eureka Street, Vol. 8, No. 6, July/August 1998; ‘So Who’s The Wrecker Then?’ in Arena, No. 43, October/November 1999; ‘Reply To A Letter’ (winner, 1st Prize, 1995 The Age Short Story Competition), in The Age Saturday Extra, 28 October 1995; ‘The Affair In M—’, in Meanjin, Vol. 63, No. 1, 2004; ‘The Farmer’s New Machine’, in New Australian Stories edited by Aviva Tuffield, Scribe, January 2009; ‘The Dividing Spring’, in Meanjin, Vols. 66.4 & 67.1, 2007/08; and ‘Gordon’s Leap’, in Overland, Issue 129, Summer 1992. An earlier version of ‘The Man Who Invented Television’ was runner-up in the 2000 HQ/Sceptre Short Story Contest and was published in HQ Magazine, Aug/Sept 2001.